Metal Mouth Message Board

Got braced May 26th. Was (and still am) unable to chew properly, but that's a whole 'nother story!

July 13th went in for spacers. Had almost ZERO problems with them! How awesome is that?!

July 20th went in for a mold of my top teeth. Easily the most intense and horrible dental experience I've ever had.

Today, got molar bands and my pendulum in. So far the not being able to speak clearly and the not being able to swallow are the weirdest. I have the rest of the day off work so I can focus on re-learning to speak, but I am terrified to try to have to eat with this thing in.

I am also still unable to chew - but honestly, I don't see myself eating much in the near future anyway (I can be defeatist, I just got a pendulum in)!

There's not must posted about pendulums so I wanted to ask if anyone has any helpful hints on coping, speaking, eating, swallowing, or re-learning speech patterns, it would be greatly appreciated.

If you don't - well, I'll come up with some! For as much info as this board and site have, which is awesome - the info on the pendulum's is really lacking

Hey there, I just got my pendulum removed on Monday after having it in for four and a half months.

The bad news is, it really sucks. The good news is that it gets better.

I remember I was very upset about not being able talk properly at first, especially because I had absolutely NO warning ahead of time. Immediately after getting it put in, I went to talk to the receptionist and I sounded so funny! I was really self-concious about it

Even though it probably doesn't seem like it now, you do learn to compensate very quickly. You will learn to produce certain sounds in a different way. When no one was home, I would read passages out loud and practice making each sound very slowly. After about a week I sounded mostly normal, although still a little weird. So don't worry, in a few days the worst of the speech difficulties will be over, and you just keep improving from there. I wouldn't plan any big speeches or presentations in the next two week though, if I were you. By the time I had mine in for a month or two, people said they couldn't notice anything different about my speech, even though I still noticed certain sounds were always a bit "off" up until the time I got the whole thing removed.

Eating was very awkward at first, and for the first few days I lived on mashed potatoes, which I simply swallowed. That seemed to be the only food I could manage. But don't worry, very soon you will be used to it enough to eat anything you could eat before. Your tongue adapts and learns to work around the new object in your mouth.

My biggest problem was with the wires on the roof of your mouth. They would press against my tongue and I got two really bad sores. You don't normally realize that your tongue naturally rests on the roof of your mouth, but with the pendulum you never stop noticing! Talking was hard because talking HURT. Your tongue will get used to it somewhat, but unfortunately mine hurt my tongue until the day I got in removed. However you can buy something from the drug store that you can apply directly to mouth sores to numb them. I wish I had discovered this sooner as it makes a HUGE difference.

Another big problem was that food would get really tangled in the wires. Vegetables like lettuce and carrots were the worst, and cheese was pretty bad too. But you will learn to be quite good at getting them out with your tongue!

For the first few weeks I was very miserable because my mouth felt very uncomfortable. However you will get used to the feeling of the pendulum in there where the roof of your mouth is supposed to be.

If my ortho had told me how miserable the pendulum would make me, I would have opted for extractions instead! However now that it is out I am very happy with the results as it made a lot of space.

Hang in there! Hopefully the next couple of months will go quickly for you. I used to slide dimes and pennies between my teeth to measure how much space was opening up.

Let me know if you have any more questions.