Dr. Fidel Del Toro was my orthodontist at Circle C Orthodontics. He consulted with me to determine the best treatment options for my needs and we settled on invisalign because I was willing to put up with regular braces. I think it took about a year or a year and a half. Take it from me folks, Invisalign is no joke. It moves your teeth, it hurts (for 3-5 days when you get new trays every two weeks), and then your teeth stay where they were moved. Dr. Del Toro was kind enough to put a permanent retainer (which is a wire m, adhered to my teeth) in the area where I had the most crowding in my teeth. I think it really helped with my teeth not shifting back. Not all orthodontists do that. My Mom did Invisalign with her ortho. in Nevada, they did not provide a permanent retainer for the same crowing issue I had, so now she has to wear her retainer trays at night for the rest of her life.
With Invisalign, you're supposed to wear the retainer trays pretty much all the time while your teeth are being moved, which I did. After Invisalign, you're supposed to keep wearing your last set of trays at night for awhile at night, which I also did. Then Dr. Del Toro transitioned me to a regular retainer to wear on the top at night, and he installed the permanent retainer on the bottom. I wore the retainer for a years but stopped eventually. I don't see a cosmetic difference from not wearing them - no shifting - but my gums are receding, which I've been told my periodontist may be partly due to past orthodontic work. Perhaps it's due to me not following Dr. Del Toro's direction to wear the retainer.
After my orthodontic work was completed, Dr. Del Toro recommended Superfloss for my permanent retainer. Now I can't love without this stuff. If you get it and use it, your dental hygienists will leave you blushing with compliments forevermore. Superfloss keeps your permanent retainer from resembling a plaque farm. I'm so dependent on this stuff...
I don't know if Dr Del Toro still has the same office staff but I loved the whole crew there. They were always very professional. Getting braces isn't super easy so it was nice to go someplace that did their best to make it as easy as possible.
You'll be glad you came to Dr. Del Toro, especially if you do Invisalign. When you get Invisalign the staff have to take impressions of your teeth. This is just a necessary step if you're getting Invisalign. It involves 1. trial and error, and 2. having someone stuff your mouth full of goo over and over to take various types of really specific impressions of your teeth. The material feels like something that could make you both drown and choke - it starts out like a paste and then it hardens. It has little to no taste. It can feel like it takes forever to harden, even though it hardens rather quickly. If you move too much while it's hardening, you'll screw up the impression and they have to redo it. Something about being in such a potentially compromising situation - you just really want to work with nice people who know their stuff. If a particular impression isn't correct for any reason, you have to redo the impression - that means more goo being stuffed in your mouth, and there's just no getting out of it. Most of the time if I had to redo an impression it was my fault or because the process involves a little trial an error. Each impression is another test on your ability to withhold your gag reflex. Dr. Del Toro's staff always managed to keep me engaged in the process so I didn't wig out, I didn't gag, I didn't move, etc etc. Best I can describe it - they keep you calm and make it like a meditation session wherein you just intensely focused on doing exactly what they say to do (which is - sit still, don't move, keep breathing).
When you get orthodontic work done, you have to make a lot of appointments, so the staff are an important part of your experience. If you call an orthodontist and you get attitude on the phone, consider this a red flag and consider going to Circle C Ortho instead. Expect to be booking many follow-up appointments when you're getting orthodontic work done because they need to do many periodic checks on the progress of your movement. The staff at Circle C made booking appointments a breeze and they were always very professional in the process. When you're booking so many appointments over the course of a year or more, this is really important. Bravo to their staff for being nothing short of amazing.
Dr. Del Toro and staff presented me with a digital 3D model of my teeth before the Invisalign process began. I was pretty impressed by that. Dr. Del Toro even did this thing where he scrolled through all the models of my teeth to show me how they'd change over time. This magical preview of how my teeth would magically transform over the course of 15 months was very schnazzy. That was 5 years ago, so the technology may be even cooler now - who knows. read more