November 2, 2006

Today I finally went to my first ortho appointment since OrthoClear was discontinued after the lawsuit. My next two sets of OrthoClear trays had already been shipped to the office, so my ortho was planning to let me proceed with those for the next six weeks, after which they would take impressions for Invisalign. I told him how disappointed I have been with the lack of progress that I've experienced with OrthoClear, and I asked him if he thought that my experience would be a lot different with Invisalign. He said that in his opinion, the two products were basically the same, and that of the two, he still believed OrthoClear was the best clear aligner treatment. Since I knew what a disappointing experience I've had with the OC aligners, that made my decision easy. I asked him what his opinion was about switching to traditional braces. He said that with braces, that I would most likely see the results I'd been waiting for MUCH FASTER, but that he hadn't mentioned it because he thought that I really didn't want to wear braces again as an adult. Though my first intention (about seven months ago) was to avoid being in braces again, since the clear aligners have been far from invisible, and since I haven't seen the results I was hoping for, I knew that braces would be the way to go. Since my top front teeth are the ones that are crowded, and also the ones that need to be vertically moved, the braces were only put on those teeth. For the bottom teeth, my ortho told me to wear my next two OrthoClear aligners. Pictures are of my progress are posted above. :)