#10 marks a milestone achieved!

How time flies!!

I've zoomed past aligners #6, 7, 8, and 9, and now I'm on aligner #10!! :) Milestone achieved!! 

(Well it's not entirely rational but #10 just seems like one good milestone to arrive at. It does mark the completion of 1/6 of my journey! :D)

Yes it's been a long long while since I last updated but I'm really still in the same stage of teeth movement. There is little change in my smile at the moment, but definitely lots of moving at the back because there are gaps between all my molars and premolars now (which make eating meat and veggies annoying cos they get stuck so easily). Here's a picture of the full view now, nevertheless, for some comparison from how it originally was. Aligner #10 is the top picture :)

And a comparison of my aligners to see how far I've come! Top row is aligner #1 and bottom row's aligner #9 (because I'm wearing #10 now). I know the aligners may look unclean but they're really all cleaned before they're kept :( After being through that few aligners, I've come to accept that stains are gonna be there regardless of how meticulous I am with the cleaning, brushing and rinsing. So, yeah. Here're my old aligners~

It's not very obvious, but the "teeth" in aligner #9 are more spaced out than those in #1, and the shape of aligner #9 is also slightly more U-shaped than #1's, which is more "V". The ideal shape at the end should be a nice U-shape :)

Had two short aligner reviews before I moved on to aligner #10, and basically everything's going according to the treatment plan :) I'm having lesser of sore gums now, though it can still be hard to bite on the day that I switch over to a new set of aligners. My teeth felt more sensitive to temperature changes though (e.g. rinsing after having a hot drink, or having an iced drink just after removing my aligners), which I wondered if it was a temporary state because my teeth are moving and "weaker", or that my frequent brushing of 4 - 5 times a day had resulted in sensitive teeth (which was an issue I never had before Invisalign). My dentist informed that it wasn't likely to be either of those, but I could continue to monitor to see if the issue persists and in the meantime, try toothpaste for sensitive teeth to see if it helps, which the clinic also kindly provided. So, we'll see how it goes!

Anyway, I was overseas in Batam a few weekends ago too and it definitely was tricky! For one thing, it was hard having little or no access to a proper cleaning system when you're out and eating. There was no other choice but to just rinse (at not-so-clean basins) and re-insert my aligners after a meal outside. Another issue was, of course, the duration of my aligners being actually on.. But you're not doing yourself justice by not eating all the local delights and whatever you want when you're in another country!!

Although it wasn't that much of local delights for this trip, the long meals I had were definitely way off the optimal 2-hours limit for aligners being out. As advised by my dentist previously, it is understandable that patients eat more often and leave their aligners out for a longer period of time during holidays (haha :P). What we can do is to compensate a little by wearing the set of aligners for the full period of 2 weeks, and of course continue to try having the aligners on for as long as we can.

Well, I have a longer 9-day trip to Taiwan (the land of awesome street food!) comin' up in December and that would definitely be a greater challenge than that weekend trip which seems like peanuts right now. Let's hope things will remain well during this time! :)