expander troubles

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atxjen
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 12:11 pm
Location: USA

expander troubles

#1 Post by atxjen »

For those of you with expanders I am wondering how long it took you to be able to talk and eat normally. I got an upper expander on Monday morning and I am still struggling with talking and eating and my tongue is contantly hurting as well! Any advice?
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gunter8888
Posts: 315
Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 12:34 pm
Location: Utah, USA

#2 Post by gunter8888 »

Meryaten nailed the essence of coping with an expander. Don't let it prevent you from talking! It is a real pain at first and honestly it never gets perfect, but you can adapt to it. The more you talk the quicker you can adapt.

Your tongue will get irritated from rubbing against the hardware, but before long your tongue will acclimate, too. Drinking plenty of water and the occasional saltwater rinse will help a sore tongue, as well.

The best thing I did during my time with my expander was to focus on the progress. I took pictures monthly and watching the little spaces open up between my teeth became a huge motivator.

Best of luck!
Last edited by gunter8888 on Tue May 01, 2007 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Expander in 8/9/06
Lowers on 11/30/06
Uppers on / Expander gone on 1/31/2007
Class III elastics added 3/14/2007
Expander #2 - 6/27/2007
20-24 months w/ fixed metal braces
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KatK
Posts: 139
Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:36 pm
Location: PA

#3 Post by KatK »

Above advice is great!

If you are having trouble with eating, keep a big glass of water next to you to wash everything down until your used to it!
~ Pendulum on December 1st
~ Damon lowers March 27
~ PENDULUM OFF MAY 22nd!
~ Palatal Bar installed May 22nd..
~ Damon clear uppers May 22 too!
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spaced*out
Posts: 42
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 1:20 pm
Location: my house

#4 Post by spaced*out »

Hmmm let me see practice a lot on your s- and t- it sounded like I said some really ugly words with this thing (ha ha) , but you will get use to it . Also I wish you the best of luck!!!
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Filip
Posts: 79
Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:31 am
Location: Europe

adjustment time

#5 Post by Filip »

It took me about 1 week of real pain to get to a stage of decent eating. And it took me another week to get to a point of enjoying eating again. After about 1 month, your abilities should be back to normal, in my case enjoying fully a steak dinner. The expander seemed a lot, lot, lot less annoying after some 3 weeks of coexistance in my mouth. Once the expander gets wider, it allows for food and speech to return.

Now I'm struggling withe the molar bands though......the inner part which is cutting into my tongue as I eat. Like barbed wire in my mouth (on the right hand side only)

When they lock the expander, in my case after 1 month of turning every day, they put a plastic cap over the wire they lock the expander with, which helped against the metal of the expander irritating my toungue.
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