Adult Expander - How do I swallow properly?

[TJ5544]

I got my upper expander installed 3 days ago, and I am literally a drool factory. My biggest challenge right now is swallowing. The second I got up from the chair after they had installed my expander, I asked the assistant how to swallow. She just nonchalantly said, "Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and swallow." Literally how? There's a metal bar there. And it's 1 cm lower than the roof of my mouth, so it only allows like 20% of my tongue to touch than normal. Before the expander, I would swallow my placing my tip of my tongue on the roof of my mouth, then "roll" the rest of it back towards my throat to push the food. Now, since the metal expander is there, I just scrape my poor tongue over it. I've been trying different ways to swallow.. most result in me choking on my food, or the massive amounts of saliva I've been producing. I've never been more conscious about how much I swallow in a day, and it has probably quadrupled in the last 3 days.

This was mostly just a rant, but does anyone have any tips on swallowing?

Also, I've been using Peroxyl 3-4x a day, which helps a ton. But my tongue is still sore and gets irritated very easily. Do I just count on callouses forming eventually? Will this get easier? It's only been 3 days and I have to have this thing in my face for over 6 months :(

[djspeece]

Sounds pretty difficult -- I hope you are feeling better soon. I have not had to experience the joys of an expander, but did do a search on this board for "Adult Expander" and then narrowed with the term "swallow": search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... %5B%5D=13 . A few of the threads seem to have vigorous discussions and I hope you can find some useful advice. Best of luck to you.