Metal Mouth Message Board

I have spent an obscene amount of time in the dentist chair over the years and recently I have started my very first ortho journey at age 31. I didn’t get braces at a young age because I didn’t want them and no one made me. Our family dentist was pretty bad.
I am now on a 2.5 year journey which will combine dental appliances as a pre-treatment followed by Invisalign. We are trying to correct my bite as well as crowding on my lower front teeth. I have a very deep bite with the typical wearing and chipping that goes with that. I also have a clenching/grinding issue and a click on both sides of my jaw. I have a seriously strong/dense jaw bone, so I am very hard on my teeth.
On Monday I got my first appliance. It is a removable retainer for the top and it is for increasing my palate size in all three directions plus correction for my deep bite, so it has three pieces of acrylic; two along the insides of the molars and one behind the front teeth. The acrylic on the sides wraps up over the back molar on each side, which is the bite plate component. Everything is wired together.
My bite looks great with it on but I talk like I have a serious speech impediment. It is so embarrassing. When I say T, D or J, my tongue stops dead on that acrylic behind my front teeth and I can’t get the word going. I read somewhere to talk or read very loud to get used to a retainer, so I’m going to try that. I also think the piece behind my front teeth is a bit bulkier than it needs to be, hopefully I can talk my dentist into seeing it this way
On Monday I am supposed to get my lower appliance, which is a fixed appliance, also for making more room in my arch. There is a lot of work to do down there, as it is very crowded. I most likely won’t get the appliance because I keep chewing up my spacers, so Monday will most likely be for getting brass spacers instead of rubber bands.
So far I am feeling WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING??? My head hurts, my talking sounds funny and I feel like someone parked a Volkswagen in my mouth. I’m very discouraged. Everyone says that my mouth will adjust and all will be well, but it is hard to believe from where I am right now. Does anyone have any good talking tips???

I've had my appliances in for 2 weeks now and I still talk a bit lispy. At first it was so bad and embarrassing! I didn't do anything special, just tried to talk a lot.

How are you finding your spacers in general? Is it thoe or your retainers that are hurting?

I had all of my spacers chewed up by the end of Tuesday, so I got them back on Thursday and I have been very very careful. So far I am doing ok, one has a tiny rip. I'm definitely getting used to them, but at first they gave me a headache. I have 4 total, they are on each side of my second molars. It feels like something is stuck in your teeth, but it is tolerable. I notice them more when I have my appliance out because the bite plate part protects them from me. If you don't want to rip the spacers, you have to be very careful what you eat. Meat is really hard to chew with your front teeth.

The appliance doesn't feel like a Volkswagen anymore, maybe a Prius. It is still bulky. My speech is still pretty bad but people are getting used to me. I find I can talk at my normal speed and I'm a lispy mess, or I can talk slowly and deliberately and I sound like I'm supressing a stutter. If I can get my careful talking up to full speed, I might have something.

My tongue is starting to get a little wear and tear from constantly examining the appliance, but my jaw muscles seem to be getting used to the new positioning, so I consider that a wash. At first it felt like an effort just to have it in and I would pop it out just to rest.

I still find myself thinking alot about how much time is left before I am done...and I'm just getting started!!!

I've read on here in can take a week or two to get used to talking properly again with the appliance in. I'm getting my on Wednesday so I'm not looking forward to that! I'm finding it hard enough to eat with just the spacers in at the moment.

Suppose the first few days of anything hard is always the worst butthen again if its worth having its worth doing.

Pics? I want to know what the appliance looks like!

Good luck on your journey, it'll all be worth it in the end, lisping and all! Keep us updated!

I posted something yesterday and I don't know what happened to it!

Oh well, just a few updates:

Ellabelle - I will post a pic of my appliance when my name turns green.

Monday they swapped out my rubber band spacers for brass ligatures and boy are they painful when they first go in. They also have pokey little ends on them, so although they don't hurt all the time, sometimes they shift around and poke. I definitely recommend sticking with rubber if you can keep them in and if they work on your teeth.

My dentist also widened my appliance a notch and shaved down some of the bulk behind my front teeth. I don't know that I'm actually talking better as much as it just feels better/easier to talk. I feel like I have so much more room to move. I'm glad that i asked for the change.

As far as getting used to things, the appliance is finally starting to blend in with the rest of my mouth and either my talking is getting better or I'm getting used to myself. I still have a long way to go, but at first it felt like I would never adjust and now I can tell that I will.

Yesterday I learned a valuable lesson - take ibuprofen before the dentist visit! I know this is a basic thing that everyone says, but I forgot, and it made the adjustments a little harder to take. I hope I won't forget that again.

I am sick to death of brass ligatures. On one side they are nice and tight and they only shift around when I eat coarse food. The ones on the other side are quite loose and they spin around and poke me all day long. Tomorrow she is supposed to tighten them all, so that should be good. I will be really glad when they are removed so I hope they are doing their job. I quit eating long before I am full because it is such a tedious process.

My appliance is also giving me problems this week because I have wires digging into the roof of my mouth and a sore on my tongue. Now that I have spent all night in this condition, it is hard to wear, I just want to take it out and let everything heal up!

Wow, I was feeling quite low yesterday. Sores are no longer bothering me (I did take some very long breaks from retainer wear yesterday) and all the ligatures are tightened and trimmed. They are working! I have a rubber band holding a spot in one place because the ligature did the job.

Also, I noticed while flossing that I am starting to have more room on top, the appliance is working too! On Monday it will be time to get the bottom appliance in and get this show on the road!

I finally got my bottom appliance today! This is a more traditional looking appliance, it is all wire, affixes to each of my bottom second molars and runs around the inside of my gum line. There are three loops to make it larger as the arch widens. It's funny how my natural instinct is to get underneath it with my tongue and try to pop it off, I certainly don't mean to and it isn't like it does any good!

Here is a photo of my top appliance, palate expander/bite plate. The bottom one is far less interesting and hard to get a photo of, since it is fixed in place already.

LadyJennifer wrote:I've had my appliances in for 2 weeks now and I still talk a bit lispy. At first it was so bad and embarrassing! I didn't do anything special, just tried to talk a lot.

Thanks for the tip! I JUST got my appliance today (to stop the tongue thrusting business). It feels like my tongue is in jail! Ortho said 3-6 months. I'm going to be a model patient...I'm aiming for 3 months!

I do not envy your tongue crib. When my appliance was brand new, I felt like every other letter I tried to form would come to a dead stop at the roof of my mouth. My dentist cut some of the bulk off of mine, which helped a ton.
Do you have any little kids? I find reading books to my son is very helpful. He is not quite old enough to get Dr. Seuss, but he is forced to hear a lot of it because Dr. Seuss is awesome for improving appliance speech!

HAD2013 wrote:I do not envy your tongue crib. When my appliance was brand new, I felt like every other letter I tried to form would come to a dead stop at the roof of my mouth. My dentist cut some of the bulk off of mine, which helped a ton.
Do you have any little kids? I find reading books to my son is very helpful. He is not quite old enough to get Dr. Seuss, but he is forced to hear a lot of it because Dr. Seuss is awesome for improving appliance speech!

I do have kids, they're older though but still like me to read to them. Funny thing, my tongue got "trapped" on the first day and my daughter said "had a hard time for a minute there huh Mom?" yep.

I'll try Dr Seuss. Thanks for the tip!

It has been awhile since I posted an update. Ever since I had my appliances installed, I go in every few weeks and my dentist uses a pair of pliers to widen the rings in the appliances which makes them larger. It has been pretty uneventful.
On the bottom appliance, which is just the lightweight wires that are strung along the insides of my bottom teeth, widening is becoming a challenge. My canines are tilted inwards and my front incisors are all overlapping, so even a minor tweak is making it difficult to fit the appliance back in behind the teeth and keep it from popping up from too much compression. I think as soon as my top teeth are wide enough not to knock off brackets, we will be switching my bottom to braces. I anticipated this and it is in my treatment plan.
The top appliance and I are getting along swimmingly. It is amazing to floss my teeth and see how much space I now have between each tooth. My dental tape now moves freely between teeth. Previously I would pop it in and pull it out for each tooth.
My speech is better than it was at the beginning but I still have a noticeable impediment. The only difference is that I don’t care anymore. I talk to most people with my appliance in and only when I am talking to a new person for a long time do I bother to mention that I wear retainers. I take it out for most phone calls because it is much more of a hindrance on the phone. It also becomes an issue when I have a few too many barley sodas