The truth about getting Invisalign in your 50s: I’ve developed a lisp and mental anguish. But I lost 7lbs in a month. It took me years to take the leap at 59 – here’s how I feel about it now

Four weeks ago, I was fitted with Invisalign retainers – those bespoke plastic aligners or ‘trays’ that midlife women, clearly too old for braces, use to straighten their teeth.

It was the culmination of at least six years of thinking about it, planning it and then endlessly changing my mind.

I used to have perfectly good teeth, but as we get older our jaws shift because our bone density decreases and, like sinking gravestones, our teeth become crooked and loose.

My once-straight pearly whites were getting jagged and ugly. And, after years of drinking black coffee and red wine, I could see they were discoloured.

My dream was to have straight white beautiful, perfect teeth. But every time I went to sign up for the trays, the cost (£3,900) and the rigmarole of it put me off. It would involve X-rays, my dentist told me, in order to make a series of complex moulds.

While I was deciding, I had my teeth scanned by a sophisticated machine, which showed me quite how horrible they were. I was told some would need filling and that I’d also need to treat my receding gums before being fitted for retainers because exposed root surface is softer than enamel and when it’s encased in trays for hours on end it runs a greater risk of decay. I’d need my overbite corrected too, she said.

On and on it went. I’d be paying thousands for days – months – of faff and pain, and yes the teeth at the end might look better, but as a 59-year-old mother of four, could I really be bothered? To paraphrase Jennifer Aniston and all the other L’Oreal models, was I worth it?

Two months ago, I decided that I was, and that the best policy – which probably applies to all dental treatment – is not to listen too hard when it’s described and to close your eyes when you sign on the dotted line. Blind trust was what I went with.

And then there I was, lying on her reclining chair, having strange, huge, clunky wedges of plastic put in my mouth. ‘It might feel a bit odd,’ my dentist Dr Shah said, forcing these plastic monstrosities into my mouth. Odd? It felt as if my mouth had been attacked. My first reaction was to gag. Once they had been ‘clicked’ in, all I wanted was for the dentist to take them out again.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked.

‘Of courshhh,’ I replied. I’d just put down a deposit of £2,000. I was hardly going to back out now.

‘How long have I got to wear them for?’ I squeaked.

‘Twenty seven weeks,’ she replied, and then added a ruthless: ‘Twenty two hours out of every 24.’

The trays are moulds that fit my teeth very closely, and at first they are very difficult to put in. As their purpose is to shift your teeth into the ‘correct’ position you have to align them correctly in your mouth and ‘click’ them in so you know they are in the right position.

I have 27 retainers to wear; one a week for 27 weeks, each specifically designed to keep on gradually changing my teeth until – at the end of number 27 – my teeth will be perfect.

‘I don’t think I can speak any more,’ I said to the dentist as I was leaving. Every word felt like a ginormous effort using a whole new configuration of tongue and lips around the big plastic trays.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said brightly, ‘everyone feels that way but they adjust pretty quickly. It’ll feel totally normal in a matter of days.’ Only it didn’t. Four weeks in and I still haven’t ‘adjusted’. My brain has not computed in any way whatsoever that my mouth is full of plastic.

I am supposed to change them to the next smallest size every week but only if I wear them long enough each day, which I don’t. (Instead of 22 hours a day, I’m averaging about 18.) Besides, I get a headache every time I change them, so I beg for an extension and am allowed to downsize every ten days instead.

Still I find it excruciatingly difficult. The two hours ‘off’ – in my case four – are supposed to be for eating, which means taking the trays out and putting them back in again three times a day, but this takes me ages. I have to put most of my hand into my mouth and rummage around trying to ‘unhook’ the trays. It is painful and clumsy.

How does anyone have a life when they have retainers? I spend all my time obsessed by the things. If I’m not taking them out and putting them in, I’m running my tongue over them uncomprehendingly or worrying about what they look like.

My teeth feel restrained and also more tender, so that even free of the retainers I can’t eat anything hard. All I manage is soup, yogurt and soft eggs.

I used to love melon, radishes, bread, but it is impossible to eat any of that. It just hurts too much. I don’t know if I’ll ever eat an apple again. I am also not sleeping well, always grinding my plasticised teeth together. Plus, I’m convinced everyone’s staring at my mouth – the moulds seem so huge, so visible.

Obviously it is impossible to date wearing them. I look swollen around the mouth area as if I’ve been in a fight, and I still lisp all the time. Kissing is out of the question. Imagine having to take out your trays in front of someone else, hooking your fingers into your mouth and forcibly hoicking them out? Then dribbling everywhere.

I feel like Jaws from the James Bond movies – my fear is that someone might unexpectedly lunge in for a kiss to find themselves enmeshed in my trays.

So instead I date without them in, but then spend the entire evening anxiously counting the hours until I can get back to the bathroom to put them back in. All of it is very clearly the opposite of sexy.

I am assuming that people who live together and/or are in a relationship either don’t kiss or plan their intimacy to the very minute around a schedule entirely devoted to the retainers. Eating three meals and having sex in just two hours a day will test the organisational capabilities of even the most efficient midlife woman.

The only upside is that you drink gallons of water and you barely eat because it’s such a faff. Most people on retainers report losing weight. I recently got down to my ideal weight of 10st 7lb using Mounjaro, but now I’ve lost another half stone because of my retainers.

All this has made me regret my teeth obsession, but also become even more obsessed. I realise that for years, every time I went on a date all I could really focus on was how bad everyone’s teeth were. Every man I met had teeth that looked like piano keys, the colour of Werther’s Original. Most were crooked, jagged, sticking out or retrograding back into their mouths.

The more I noticed it, the worse it became. I then began to look at everyone’s teeth and it soon became obvious to me that some people had great teeth and some didn’t. I realised I was in the latter camp.

I know in the end my teeth will look brilliant – or so my dentist says – even and white with no overbite. However, I will have to wear a retainer every night forever more to keep them in place or they will start creeping back. And the thought of it makes me feel very tired indeed.

It is a big commitment to make, and all in the name, essentially, of vanity. Only time will tell if it’s worth it.