Braces? At my age!

**Please note: my article was "borrowed" by get-a-celebrity-smile.com and appears without my permission on their website, advertising some teeth whitening pens. I DO NOT endorse them, especialy since they used my article without my permission and I cannot find any way to contact them to have it removed!!

I just got Invisalign braces this week for a rouge front tooth that decided after 20 years to revert back to it's former position. (I wore metal braces twice before as a child--blah!).

I am miserable. Of course it would be worse if I had those horrible metal brackets tearing up my cheeks, but my whole face hurts. The tray, as they call it--it snaps over your teeth, has rough spots on it along the gum line that are driving me up the wall. I've already attacked it with a nail file a couple of times.

Brace Face by GottaLotta

And on top of that I've got a sore throat and nausea. At first I thought I was coming down with something, but thought perhaps I would check the intenet for reported side effects of Invisalign. Lo and behold, I found many other people reporting the same thing! I've concluded it's either an allergic reaction to the plastic or caused by a severely dry mouth (another side effect of having Invisalign).

I reported these symptoms to my orthodontist, who is one of those good ole southern boys, and he said he'd never heard of such a thing. Maybe it was anxiety. (WTF??!!!)

So I have taken it upon myself to educate him by emailing him all the links from my afternoon of research on the internet. I'm kind of locked into treatment with him since I've already paid for over half of it, so changing orthos would be a bit of a hassle. Besides, the histrionic female accusation, he's a nice guy otherwise.

I'm definitely going to lose weight too, due to the hassle of taking the durn tray in and out every time I eat. Then I have to brush before putting it back in, otherwise the food will be trapped in the tray and I'll get cavities. Unfortunately, aside from a couple of inches around my belly to get back into my "skinny" jeans, I really don't need to lose weight. So I'll end up looking like a skeleton before this self-imposed ordeal is over.

I've been sipping on water the last few hours and the nausea has gotten better, so maybe it is related to dry mouth. The good news is my treatment will only be 12 weeks long. I put up with morning sickness during my pregnacy with my son longer than that, so I guess I can hang in there!