Metal Mouth Message Board

I had to make a last minute appointment with my ortho today to once more go through some details of my treatment that is about to start. She really thinks I'm worrying too much and I hope she's right.

I'm getting started with my palatal expansion tomorrow as they will take out the spacers and put in the expander. I actually want it put on in good time before the surgery that goes with it so that I'll have a small time margin to get used to the appliance first. Having a surgery and the appliance all at once may be a lot to handle. I want to take it step by step.

I've been worrying about my ortho saying the appliance will be there for 6 months, but today she said the minimum is 2 months, maybe I'll get it out in 3 months. So not necessarily the whole 6 months, that sounds better! 6 months is the time she wants to wait and see before taking the next orthodontic step. We need to see how those impacted canines will react to the expansion and move on from there. My ortho refuses to give me any scenarios before we get there. Maybe we'll be able to start bringing those canines down OR maybe we'll have to pull out some teeth OR maybe we'll remove those canines... many options, and all open.

Something new came up though. My OS has planned to remove an upper wisdom tooth along the SARPE surgery, but now my ortho said he might as well remove the lower wisdom teeth while he's at it. I don't know if that's a good idea to do all that at once? Would I be terribly achy?
Any input from anyone who has had all their wisdom teeth pulled in one session?

well, usually people do get all wisdom teeth pulled at once. (i havent had mine done yet) so i don't think that part of it is weird at all. i would think its better to have all pulled at once to get it out of the way and go through the pain only once

I've now had my palatal expander on for two hours and here are my first impressions.

To tell you the truth putting in on was even worse than I expected. Everything was fine as long as I had my mouth wide open and they were installing the appliance. But the minute I closed my mouth the evil thing touched the back of my tongue I gagged and coughed like never before and had tears rolling down my eyes uncontrollably. Still I was determined to fight it. One of the orho's assistants (there were two of them working on me) said "Let's take it out, I feel sorry for her!" but I mumbled and waved my hand to signal "wait". And I gagged and I coughed and spitted some more and shed some more tears. Then I cursed. Though being a polite person I first asked "may a say the f-word now, please", and they said "go right ahead if it helps". I gagged some more and got up and started to walk around the room. It got a little better within a few minutes. Still made me gag though. They gave me a glass of water to try drinking and swallowing.

When I finally got some of my sorry act together I grabbed a calendar from the table and started reading it out loud to hear how my speech now was. There was nothing else handy so that had to do. In fact it happened to be a wall calendar with cooking recipes for each month, so I made the assistants laugh out loud as I went lisping and slurring and walking around the room in circles "peel the apples and slice them" etc. adding "this is some kind of stand up don't you think." Sometimes you just have to laugh to get over a situation.

One of the assistants was kind enough to stay in the room with me for as long as I felt like I needed her to be around. She really was sweet. She even gave me her home number and took some tools with her home in case I panic tonight and felt I have to get rid of the device. She promised to drive over in case of emergency. She also didn't cement the appliance yet to let me get used to the idea without panicing about that. If it won't work out it can still be taken out with no problem.

The appliance feels VERY weird to say the least. My mouth is so full and my tongue will probably be mashed within the next 24 hours. It's hard not to have it push itself against the appliance and it's already getting sore from the rough new contact. I can feel it against my tongue all the time. I feel like I have to suck on the stuff in my mouth and I do, whether I want to or not. There is excess saliva and I have to swallow all the time - and mind you, tha is a challenge right now, I have to concentrate on it!
I still feel like gagging when I push my tongue far back or far forward or examine the curves of the expander too eagerly. I can't imagine how I'm ever going to eat anything with this thing on! I expect another gagging episode there. I tried with a small mint a minute ago. It disappeared somewhere up above the gizmo and I had to shake me head to get it loose, and then it dropped right down to my throat. This should be interesting if eating will be like this

As you see instead of rushing home I rushed to the board to give an immediate report on this experience. I felt I needed to. So far I'm still standing, but let's see how it goes from here. I'm not a quitter so I hope to stay as brave as I did at the ortho's office today.
I just hope this gagging thing will subside! I just did it again.

Oh, one more thing. I let my boyfried read my former message and he said "you didn't mention anything about how your speech is better than you expected". True. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I just had a nice little chat here with my sweetheart and he even asked whether I should try not to talk so much

lol, nice - I guess your verbal skills are finely tuned then Good look with your treatment. May the force be with you and your Palatable Expander war!! lol I hope it gets easier for you.

It's my 3rd day with the expander on and my verbal skills deteriorated during day 2. The back curve of the appliance cut into my tongue every time I swallowed or talked and made the tongue really sore and angry looking. So I went back to the ortho's office first thing this morning to have them check things out before they got any worse. They took the appliance off and readjusted it so that it feels somewhat better now.
I don't gag as much as I thought I would, which is a relief. My mouth produces a lot of saliva so I have to slurp all the time. It's very annoying, I can tell you that! They say that will get better too.

Eating is another story. Because I can't actually feel the roof of my mouth now everything I put in disappears somewhere in my mouth. Mainly to be found on top of the appliance where it gets stuck. It seems to draw things to it like a magnet! If I put a mint in, it immediately "jumps" to the top of the thing and sits there like on a shelf!
I'm on a very lousy soft/liquid diet (porridge, blueberry soup, yoghurt) now because I can't stand the idea of putting anything solid in my mouth and have it stuck all over the expander. I tried with a slice of cheese, size of half a credit card, and decided not to try again. Tracing after those tiny pieces of cheese up in my palate was no fun.

All in all I think (knocking on wood now!) I'm doing better with the appliance than I expected. It is a nuisance and I'll be counting days to get it off but it's tolerable, at least right now, after having it adjusted a bit.

Sometimes I think I sound like Hannibal the Cannibal as he was eyeballing at Clarice Starling through his prison cell bars telling her how he was going to have her for lunch with some Chianti. Slurrrrrrrp!
Sometimes I feel like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings, having to pause speech every once in a while to make a peculiar sound (SLURP!).

Oh boy!

Post deleted by Joplin

I agree Joplin, you definately look different in the second picture, I know it's a rather unfair comparison, because the first pic was only taken a few days after your SARPE, but you still look much better in the 2nd picture. Hopefully all this will be worth it, as your treatment progresses and you begin to see even more results.

It will be interesting to see how your canines are brought into position.

Because I see myself in the mirror every day, the facial changes may not be so obvious to me as they happen so slowly. But I got more evidence that changes are happening. I just bumped into a colleague at work whom I hadn't seen for a couple of weeks. He said he immediately noticed that I look different. Couldn't put a finger on how exactly, but different. This is quite interesting! Especially because I find the changes positive

Hi Joplin,

thanks for the pictures !
Brave of you to show your whole face and not only the mouth area.
And yes, second one is indeed a lot better !
It would be interesting if your boyfriend or yourself could take a picture
of the upper palate, to show the expander. Hmmm, but I know when I
wanted to take a picture of my TPA, it was not so simple to get a good
one. I had to redo it several times. I must have looked funny, there
before the mirror with a high tech digital camera almost in my mouth.

I did notice you are more calm now, since that last panic post.
Good for you !
Cya.

As you can see, Clo, I just removed the latter two pictures from the post. To tell you the truth I didn't feel very comfortable about having my face there, so that much for brave I consider my 15 minutes of publicity up

Oh, I hope I didn't make you feel uncomfortable about this.
If so, I am very sorry !!!!!

Don't worry about it, Clo I was going to remove them anyway. Knowing there are all kinds of brace fetishists and other weirdos walking free on the information super-highway I had second thoughts as I posted them in the first place. I'm glad you got a glimpse though since you were the only one, I think, who requested to see some pics

I just had my weekly ortho's visit and she said no more turning the key of the expander. YES! I was so hoping she would say that! She locked up the key hole with a wire and said "come back in 2-3 months". My next appointment will be on 17th January. Then they will take new x-rays and I think new molds too.
Ortho said she wanted me to continue wearing my expander for 6 months, but I said PLEASE NO!, and she remembered my little attitude problem about this appliance... So she promised to replace this cursed expander with two tpa's (yeah, I gotta have more of everything!) that will hold the palate in it's new design from that on. 11 weeks to the day of getting rid of the expander. Oh let them fly by! At least I have a set date again to stay focused on
I'm not that enthusiastic about spending Christmas with this thing on, but it's just one Christmas in lifetime, right?

For the record: the key was turned for 24 days, 27 turns altogether.
And now I'm starting to count the days to 2005-1-17!!!

Good to know you are at the end of your expander treatment stage, joplin. Do you notice that your upper arch has got noticeably wider now?? I had a very narrow upper arch, but on recent photo's the arch as got wider, but I had extractions and not an RPE. Always wondered if I should have had one, but my ortho said it wasn't necessary.

You are right, one xmas to put up with it still in, is just about tolerable lol.