10th Trays

OK, these trays didn't hurt in the beginning, but OMG!!! For some strange reason, toward the end of my time with this set, there was a day where that one area of my gums (by the crossbite tooth) wouldn't stop bleeding!!

I had just left the house and was on my way to work when I noticed the taste of blood in my mouth. I looked in the rearview mirror, and saw that my upper trays were almost filled with blood! Now, again let me reiterate that a very small amount of blood in the trays winds up looking like alot more only because it's really spread out and can't go anywhere, but it was still alot more than I've ever had. I took them out while I was driving, and just kept on playing around in that low gumline area (where the blood was coming from, of course) with my tongue, and swallowing any more blood that was coming out. I figured a capillary popped, and it just needed time to clot.

Well, I kept on tasting blood pretty much throughout my 1 1/2 hour commute (don't get me started on the length of my daily commute to work), so I waited a bit before I put my trays back in. Around 10:30am, I figured I was in pretty good shape to put them back in, and went to the bathroom to do so. As soon as I got back to my desk -- yup, you guessed it -- I tasted blood again. Sometimes, I'm able to kind of suck it out of the trays and make the little amount in there dissipate, but when I whipped out my pocket mirror, I could see that this method wasn't going to work this time. There was too much blood.

I wound up having to keep them out for pretty much the whole day. I popped them back in before I left, to have on during my loooooooong drive home. I was really worried, and was about to call the ortho if this bleeding didn't stop. Surprisingly, there was no more blood on the way home. And the next day? No blood. Nor has there been any further bleeding since then, too. Odd, but I'm glad it's over, and I'm not worried anymore, either. Like I said before, I have a feeling that there was probably a pesky capillary that just needed some time to heal.

Despite the bloody ending, I still only wore these trays for 12 days. Since I wore the 9th trays for an extra 7 days, I decided that I'd cut back on tray time for the next 3 trays (trays 10, 11 & 12), in order to still be able to be on time for my final set of trays. I have it set in my mind that I'll be finishing my 16th (and last) trays on the last day of April, and I want to be able to stick to that as much as possible. I can technically say that my treatment only went from September to April at that point. Granted, I may wind up needing some fine-tuning trays done, which would technically then extend my treatment time, but if I can help it, I'd like to stick to the original schedule.

What was sort of cool was that, with my trays in, my crossbite tooth and the lower tooth were flush with each other. Prior to this, when I ran my finger from top to bottom in that area, my crossbite tooth was always an indentation, with the lower tooth jutting out in front.

Now, here's what my teeth looked like after this set of trays:

Center smile:


Center, mouth agape:


Lower:


Upper:


Crossbite side: