Rubber bands!?! WTF?!
Can we talk about rubber bands?!?!
I’ve been on Invisalign for 10 months. Last appt-at about 9 months, they did a check and took new scans for my next set of trays. Ortho said things are looking really great, My bite is good, I’m responding well to treatment, and I’m on track to finish sooner than we initially expected. I went in yesterday to get my new trays. Not only did they put new nubbins on every single one of my top front teeth, which is not cool, but they also put a little metal thing on my second to last molar for rubber bands. Y’all. I’m not ok!
First of all, at no point in any of the discussions that I have ever had about Invisalign either before I got it or since I got it Has anyone ever even said the words “rubber band” to me nor does any of the printed material I’ve received mention anything about rubber bands. But here I was with the assistant’s hands already in my mouth as she’s attaching new nubbins and she says, “These next ones are a bit different. They’re for the rubber bands,” and I was like, “WHAT!? No! I’m not doing rubber bands!” If I wanted rubber bands I would’ve gotten regular braces. The whole point of invisalign is it’s less invasive! So she said I could take it up with the doctor, and insisted that she still had to put the metal attachments on because “that’s what the doctor wanted“ and that, after I talk to the doctor, if we aren’t doing rubber bands, she would take them off.
So, after that’s done, the ortho came over and told her that I won’t even consider rubber bands. She said “OK. They’re just to protect your bite, which is good, but we want to keep it that way, but it’s ok if you don’t do it. Maybe towards the end, we might have to do rubber bands for, like, three weeks.” I was like, “That is the appropriate amount of notice for something like this. I can work my way up to accepting it, and three weeks is manageable.“ But then, they never said anything about taking the metal things off my teeth and I was too flustered and upset to remember To ask.
Now, those metal things on my back molars are SHREDDING the inside of my mouth. It hurts so bad. I had to wear a travel night guard to sleep in order to avoid cutting my mouth up all night, but eating and even talking is absolutely miserable. Some of it’s that the new regular attachments are all new and sharp, but the metal things are exposed and painful even with my trays in.
So basically I guess my questions are:
Have y’all had rubber bands?
Did you know that was gonna happen or did they spring it on you?
Has anyone here refused rubber bands and, if so, did it like seriously hurt your results?
To be honest, I’m perfectly happy with how my teeth look now. We could stop today and I’d be fine. I’m not doing this for a perfect smile. I’m doing this because one of my bottom front teeth was leaning way forward, which was causing a lot of gum recession and my dentist said I was gonna lose that tooth eventually if I didn’t push it back into place. He recommended Invisalign to push that tooth place. That’s it. Thats the whole reason I’m doing this. I’m not trying to be Miss America here.
Anyway I just want to hear your stories about rubber bands to maybe help talk me down from the ledge a bit. And maybe I need to suck it up and do the rubber bands, in which case, I wanna hear that, too.
thanks for reading my freak out. And thanks for your help!