Off topic : Be there or be square

I've got a bit bored of the guys over at Pestiside not using all the lovely stories I keep sending them in favour of endless reviews of burgers, so I am going to post them here instead even though they won't be about my teeth.

HUNGARY TO HOST FOURTH RUBIK'S CUBE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
2007-09-20 11:27 (New York)
Budapest (dpa) - Some 25 years after the first ever Rubik's Cube World Championship the fourth such tournament will be held in Budapest this October, organizers said on Thursday.

More than 300 people from 32 different countries are expected to attend the tournament, where they will compete in variety of different categories including solving the cube blindfolded or with one hand. The Rubik's cube - in its standard form a multicoloured cube with nine tiles on each side that must be rotated to make all six sides the same colour - was invented in 1974 by Hungarian Erno Rubik, but did not become popular until the early 1980s. Over 100 million cubes were sold between 1980 and 1982 as kids and adults everywhere became obsessed with solving the puzzle. The craze was so intense that in 1981 a book on how to solve the cube, written by 12-year-old Patrick Bossert, sold over 1.5 million copies.

The United States is expected to send some 39 competitors to vie with 50 from Hungary and 22 from Japan for a total of 20,000 euros (20,168 dollars) in prize money. (You might want to double-check that exchange rate, bucko.) Competitors from Lithuania, Indonesia and Mexico are also expected to make the journey. The current fastest time on record is 9.86 seconds, set by France's Thibaut Jacquinot in the second round of the 2007 Spanish Open.

My "before" photos

I have been meaning for some time to post the photos my ortho took of my teeth before treatment back in Jan 2006 and I have finally got around to it! I will admit I find these photos pretty scary to look at now because my teeth look so much more regular now.

Quick aside: Finally Google acknowledges my existence. This blog is the number one hit when you search for "Budapest Invisalign blog", number two when you search for "Budapest Invisalign" and somewhere on page two for "Invisalign blog". Woohoo!

Anywhere enjoy the horror show :o)

A Small Step Forward

Part of my Invisalign plan since day one was the small ledge behind my front upper teeth. This was created by four bulges in the upper aligner behind the four upper front teeth and the idea was that the lower teeth would sit on the ledge and take pressure to move down rather than backwards and so close the overbite. The problem was that it always felt more comfortable to close my jaws more completely with the lower teeth further back and higher up, so that's what happened, especially at night. But now my teeth have moved around enough that it actually feels more comfortable to rest the lower teeth on the ledge. So I hope that this will speed up the closing of the overbite by putting more downward pressure on the lower front teeth, but also by changing the extension and angle of the interarch elastics to pull the lower molars up.

Otherwise I am not sure how things are going. Some mornings the problem teeth look to be fitting well into the alingers, other mornings I can see clear gaps between the teeth and the aligner. I had no idea teeth could move around so much on a day-to-day basis. Or maybe I am becoming obsessed with my teeth and am imagining it!

Steady as She Goes

So I am back from a beautiful weekend in Budapest. Great weather, great company, stayed in my favorite apartment on Lónyay Utca just a block from the funky restaurant/bar zone of Ráday Utca. Had such a good time that I wasn't too bothered about losing my mobile, which I either dropped or had stolen while waiting for a friend's delayed train at Keleti Station.

Anyway Dr H was fairly pleased with my teeth. The upper premolar problem teeth seem to be moving now with the strong elastic chains. The lower premolars are still a problem and Dr H warned me that we are on thin ice. As long as it possible to get the aligners on, we are OK, but if they fall out of plan too far, we are going to either have to make a mid-term correction (making a new course of aligners) or switching to metal braces (eek!). This warning did focus my mind and I think I have found a strategy which I think is working very well and that I would like to share with my readers. If the aligners stop fitting a tooth snugly, the forces they apply are reduced which means the tooth is likely to drift even further out of plan. My problem is that there is a gap of a few millimetres between the problem premolars and the aligner. My solution is to put a knuckle in between my premolars and bite as hard as I can stand. This keeps the aligners snug around the teeth, applying maximum force, and I think it's had quite a visible effect in just a few days. So I remain optimistic that Dr H will have a nice surprise at our next appointment in early September.

Close shave

Not much to report other than that I had a couple of very uncomfortable hours when I thought I had lost aligner set 17 - probably in the car park of a restaurant in northeast Umbria. If you recall, set 16 got thrown away by mistake on a flight to Tokyo. At the time, sets 15 and 18 were both hundreds of miles away so I thought I was facing several days without aligners. Since I had already learnt at New Year just how quickly teeth can relapse when not wearing aligners, I thought I was in big trouble with Dr H. Anyway, I was majorly relieved to find them on the floor under the kitchen table.

I am a real pro at getting the new elastics on now - it takes about 2 minutes compared to the 30 minutes on the first attempt back in May.

Slow Progress

Two weeks into the new regime. The new attachments no longer irritate the inside of my mouth and I can get the elastics on in just a few minutes. I cannot see whether the premolars have moved as planned - but I can certainly feel strong pressure on them. I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and start wearing the upper aligners during office hours, even if they give me a slight - but noticeable - lisp. A small panic when I realise Dr H has not given me enough elastics to last until our next appointment in July. He says he will post some from Budapest. I am on holiday next week with a friend who knows I wear the aligners, so I expect to be highly compliant.

A big welcome to the blog's first visitor since I started tracking. On the 4th June, a Comcast cable customer running Firefox visited my blog for 101 seconds. It makes it all worthwhile somehow.

Upstairs, Downstairs

A beautiful spring weekend in Budapest. Last visit, Dr H was concerned about my lower canines straying out of line and I had been wearing the lower set a lot more during the day. I felt the canines had improved and Dr H agreed. But he was concerned about three upper premolars which were relapsing because they had not rotated enough, possibly because I had skipped set 16. This meant set 18 was very hard to wear and was losing its grip on the problem premolars. He talked about going back to set 14 or making a midcourse correction (having the remaining aligners remade), but eventually decided to fit attachments on the teeth and use very strong elastic to pull them back into line. So for the next two months I will stay with set 17 and be fiddling with elastic which takes forever to put on the attachments. Actually, it's not that bad. The first time I fitted the elastic it took well over half an hour - it's amazing how quickly you get better at these things and now I can do it in under ten minutes.

Losing a Set

On a flight to Tokyo I lose my washbag which contains aligner set 16. Dr H had said this usually is not too much of a problem because you can move onto the next set. It was a bit of a close shave because I nearly put sets 16 & 17 in the washbag, and losing both would have been a disaster. Set 17 is really hard to wear, so I alternate 17 at night, 15 during the day for about a week.

March Visit

I take the Thursday afternoon flight to Budapest. P meets me at the airport and drives me to the apartment overlooking the Opera. I try to get my ipod fixed at the Apple store just down Andrássy, but the store seems to be more for show than fixing things. I take a mate out to dinner at the Pava restaurant in the Gresham Palace - over-priced and pretty ghastly customers. As we cross the top of Váci Utca, a couple of nice friendly local girls stop us and ask the way to Bécsi Ut. I know where Bécsi Utca is - it is the road to Vienna going northwest out of town going past Dr H's surgery. One of the girls blows it a bit by giving me a small lecture on the difference between an Ut and an Utca. We offer them our map and they ask us if we would like to go for a drink in a bar they know nearby. We say maybe later and head for dinner. I explain to my out-of-town friend that this sounds like a standard Budapest scam. The drinks will be 200 euros per round and heavies will appear to take us to the nearest cashpoint to pay up. And the police will take no interest if you complain. My friend thinks the girls were too nice to be involved in something like that, but when we cross Vorosmarty Tér after dinner they are still there looking for Bécsi Ut. It is actually just a block away, so I think I was right.

In my experience, Budapest feels like a fairly safe city full of friendly, capable, interesting people and their reputation is the real victim of this sort of crime. The police and authorities could end this scam pretty much overnight if they chose to.

It has been nearly three and a half months since my last visit and I suppose I have become a little complacent in the number of hours that I have been wearing the alingers. Dr H is disappointed with my teeth on Monday morning. The lower premolars have not moved as much as they should and there is now a gap between the teeth and the aligner. I promise to wear the aligners more hours a day and he asks me to come back in ten weeks.

I spend the rest of the morning looking around the Roman amphitheatre opposite his office and getting lost finding the tomb of Gul Baba, a Turkish mystic credited by the locals for introducing the rose to Buda. On the flight home, I sit next to a couple of Romanians who turn their mobile phones on mid-flight just to prove there is no signal.

New Year's Eve

I go away with friends, who don't know I am wearing aligners, for New Year's Eve. Since we are going to be sharing a small flat and continuously eating and drinking, I decide not to wear the aligners for the 48 hours. This turns out to be a big mistake. I can't believe how much ground the teeth lose in such a short period and feel the course of treatment is put back by over a week.