Setback- my own fault

The dentist warned me early on to be careful not to lose or damage my DNA appliances because they are "very expensive" to replace. To me, when a dentist calls something "very expensive",  that's very scary.

I ran into an unexpected social situation yesterday. I was running an errand and had not planned to linger anywhere. I was wearing my lower appliance. In the midst of my errand I was offered some very nice hospitality which included snacks. I took out my appliance in order to eat something. I wrapped it in a napkin. (It then looked like something that needed to be thrown out when clearing the table.) I forgot about it. After leaving, I realized my error and called the host but the place was closed for the day. I got there first thing this morning to dumpster dive, but it was garbage day and the garbage man had already come and gone.

I called the dentist office to report it. Spoke to office personnel, but the doctors were already gone for the weekend. Office personnel had no idea what the replacement is going to cost. They said it hadn't happened there before. I have an appointment for next Thursday. Until then I'm left wondering about about a dentist's definition of "very expensive". It was a stretch for me to do this DNA treatment to begin with.

Of course, this will set me back some weeks on the progress of my lower teeth as well.

Update and Some New information

So here we are seven months since the first appliance arrived, and two months since the last update, when the lower appliance arrived.

Progress so far: I've got a nice straight set of uppers, but I am told we are not near finished with them. We still need to widen the arch "x"millimeters, until the the width of the arch is at least as wide as the width of the (relaxed) tongue (the dentist measures these things).  So, I am not close to being done with the wearing and lateral adjusting of the upper appliance. However it is very nice to have the upper teeth straight already. It provides a real psychological boost. I agreed to do DNA orthodontics for health/quality of life in old age reasons, but I can't deny it is very nice to lose the self-consciousness about the messy rows of teeth.

I have also been told that once we are done moving the uppers, I will still need to keep using the appliance overnight as a retainer, permanently. The gaps in the appliance will be filled in, so I expect it to be a bit less awkward feeling. Will my speech (while wearing the appliance) improve also? I hope so.

In the meantime, the dentist wants me to temporarily halt adjusting the upper appliance, and give the lower appliance some time to help my lower teeth to 'catch up'. That is how things stand as of this writing.

You can see some visible gap in my lower appliance now, even with the low res of the photo. My bottoms are still pretty crowded and snarly, but I can definitely detect slow changes occurring. Since this appliance has little effect on my speech, I am able to wear it quite a few more hours per day than the upper appliance. As such, the dentist has just advised me to adjust it more often now. I am comfortable now adjusting it twice a week. This will hopefully speed things along.

However, once my bottom teeth have reached a certain point, the current lower appliance will be sent off for modification to add the ability to adjust it in the forward (anterior) axis, like the upper appliance. But this is unique to my mouth- the reader (or another DNA patient) will experience their own unique course of treatment.

Another piece of information I just learned which ties into a question a reader asked me previously: Sometime later, it is likely I am going to receive Invisalign appliances to wear. The DNA appliance will take me to a certain point, but then we will need to fine tune things a bit with Invisalign. This has something to do with "rotation". But I am also told it is included in the price of the DNA treatment. Which is good, because the expense is already quite a significant burden on my budget.

There are a few other details I have learned about what the dentist would like to do to my teeth, but they are unique to my situation and would not be relevant to readers, so I will decline to bore you with those details. I'll just say, my teeth have a lot of wear and tear on them.