Disclaimer: this is a rather long description of a relatively uneventful dream treatment that I actually wouldn't mind having at one point in life. I will also have a thing about a nightmare / insanely unrealistic treatment plan
My dream orthodontic treatment would be something that doesn't look particularly excessive but is actually causing a great deal of discomfort for the wearer. It would be tackling real issues as an excuse to pile up some orthodontia to treat them in a rather disproportionate way.
I would opt for ceramic brackets, because let's face it, they are pretty much just as visible as metal ones are, but they give off that vibe that the patient tried to go for something not too conspicuous which is the image I think I would like to project. They also come in pretty big sizes so with a nice set of thick metal wires, with all sorts of bends on them and a generous sprinkling of hooks for elastics, they would push out my lips quite a bit, so even with my mouth fully closed people would be able to tell quite easily that I'm wearing braces.
On my lower jaw there's a considerable gap between my third and fourth teeth on one side that I subconsciously created by pushing them out of alignment after I got my braces off as a teenager. To rotate these teeth back to where they belong I would have both of them banded and joined with a coil spring. To the back of these two bands I would have a custom tongue spurs fitted to train my tongue to stay away from these teeth. Again, the two banded teeth would be super noticeable among the ceramic brackets but something I could explain to whoever is wondering. Even after these two teeth were moved back to the correct position, my ortho would keep the bands in place because of the tongue spurs.
As you can see my tongue thrusting is clearly an issue (it has created a tiny gap between my upper front teeth when I was a child and even with wearing my retainer, I can achieve a 1/4 - 1/2 mm gap) I would be fitted with a removable habit crib. I would of course struggle an awful lot with it in my personal life (there's no way for your tongue to fully get used to it, from the day you're fitted with the appliance there's room for improvement but ultimately you can only get used to your new, impaired speech really) and the first day of trying to have it in at strategically okay times at work I would just give up and not wear it at work altogether. Even with trying to wear it 24 hours over the weekend I would still fall short of the 20 hours / day required wear. After 6 month of this my ortho would voice his concerns that this isn't working as he expected and at the next check up he would fit me with a permanent habit crib. It would be barely visible but it would make my speech infinitely worse and without much chance for it to improve considerably. I would keep these for the entire length of my treatment.
Soon after this I would receive my headgear. It would be a sturdy cushion loop facebow with a with a generously sized black high pull and cervical strap. It would be putting a small amount of pressure on my upper molars to move them back ever so slightly so it would be rather comfortable to wear but I would be struggling with the 16 hour wear time as I would be categorically rejecting to wear it to work. I would try to make up for the lost time by wearing it all weekend which would put a strain on my social life. I would mostly just spend time at home with my boyfriend who says he doesn't mind the lisp too much and is learning to come to terms with the headgear. I would on occasion head out with him wearing the headgear but as I wouldn't be used to it, I wouldn't be able to relax in public, not for one second. I would already be super aware of my lisp caused by the tongue crib, which gets far worse when I'm talking to someone I haven't met before (the nerves).
As I had some issues with popping some of my lower brackets off, my ortho would decide that the lower ceramic brackets have to go. He would just blame it on the material and say that the technology unfortunately still has its limits. I would get most of them replaced by metal brackets of the same size (my ceramic brackets were already quite big!) and some of them he would band without bothering to explain why this would be strategically important (it isn't). They would be 10 times more noticeable, but in reality, people have already gotten used to my braces and this change doesn't seem to shake anyone too much. All the metal on my lower jaw becomes more apparent when I get my lower lip bumper. Thankfully it fits quite snugly so it doesn't really show, but it does push out my lower lip a fair bit making it look very plump. My orthodontia is now permanently on display and even without the headgear, my lips don't touch anymore and I do look like as if I had a bit of an underbite. After careful consideration I decide I don't mind this particular development too much as I always wanted fuller lips, I experiment a bit more with lipsticks on work days.
We are at about 9 month into the treatment now, and most of my devices don't change too much for the next year, year and a half. I wear plenty of elastics in various configurations, always to be worn all day and some strengths will only come in particular colours which I will find mortifying but there will not be much for me to do about it.
Towards the end of my treatment, it will be time to rotate my molars that are slightly out of alignment. My ortho decided to do this last so that everything will have a bit of time to settle. I will lose the elastics and the lip bumper, I will only wear the headgear at night, but my molars will be anchored to mini screws in my palate. This relatively uneventful last phase will take another half a year until my ortho declares it's time to lose the braces.
My retainers will be Hawleys and will come with a tongue crib built into the plastic bite plate. For the first year I will wear them all the time I'm not at work (totalling about 16 hours a day with almost full time wear over the weekend) and I would continue wearing my headgear at night. After a year I would reduce the wear to 12 hours a day, and on the 2 year anniversary I would graduate to only wearing them at night, with headgear only 3-4 nights a week. This configuration I would then continue with until the end of time.
