Six months later...

Yes, the time in traditional braces was supposed to be about 3 months. I'm becoming the poster child for slow results, I guess. That and all the interesting hardware in my mouth. I specifically chose invisalign so I could complete my treatment unnoticed, and now here I sit with metal archwires (the white ones don't move as smoothly), wire ties, springs to push the lower molar forward, and class III elastics. Oh yeah, very attractive and oh-so-discreet. AGH - what I can tell you though is that there is no way in the world invisalign could have corrected my teeth. If you have similar issues to mine, think long and hard about going that route, even if your provider tells you it's viable!
My top teeth are pretty much in place, but my bottom teeth still need to come up on the left side, and the extraction gap is almost, but still not closed. My bite is soooo much better than when I started, and my jaw doesn't ever click anymore, so I'm very grateful for that. The bite is still changing a bit because of the lower teeth movement through the extraction site, but I'm not worried about that. I'm a bit concerned about a small gap at the gumline that I just developed between my upper right lateral and canine. Altogether I'm happy with how the results are looking like they will be, frustrated at the inaccurate estimate of how long it would take, and not to thrilled with all the doo-dads in my mouth. It's certainly been a lesson for me about vanity. I'm not a particularly overly vain person, but I do try to look my best and I really find it difficult to have all this stuff in my mouth when I want to put forward a professional appearance - I mean, I'm 41, not 15!
My ortho is a really great guy, and by now is refusing to estimate an end date for my treatment. He's admitted he has nightmares about my teeth (LOL) and that I've been one of the most challenging cases he's ever had, and my teeth honestly do seem to have a mind of their own. Little by little he's taming them and I am so looking forward to getting 'naked' again sometime soon.

I'm still not convinced about my right lateral/canine, and plan to talk to the ortho at my appt. this week. I think the canine still needs to move in/down a bit.

You can see here that it's not completely aligned yet.


On my right side the elastics are from the lower canine to the upper molar:


On the left, they go from the upper canine to the lower molar in order to close the extraction gap (along with the spring you can see as well).


Still a couple mm's to go to close the gap.


That's it for now, hope you enjoyed looking down my throat! LOL.