Day 6: Making Up for Lost Time!

Hello again!

I am SO sorry I didn't get to write previously! My life has just been oh-so busy lately, so I did not get time to   post. I have been working on schoolwork and my Girl Scout stuff, and family, and just plain life in general, all of which take up a great deal of my time. I will try to write more frequently though, so don't fret! I'm not dead!

My last few expansions have been increasingly more feel-able. They're not painful, but they're existing and increasingly more, well, there.

Food has become dramatically easier (however chocolate and leafy vegetables, namely lettuce and cabbage, are infamous for getting stuck up there), and I have stopped slurping. Yay for me! My mum has decided to get me a waterpik (yay again) so that I don't have to carry a glass of water everywhere I go! For those of you who don't know, a waterpik is very similar to those little water sprayers they use at the dentist.

I can eat tortillas again! Yay the third time this post! I just chew on the side of my mouth now, so I don't get stuff stuck as much, and I don't have drama fits when I DO get stuff stuck up there.

I will actually be getting braces sometime after I get my expander out, but I still have some baby teeth in my mouth, so hopefully they won't go on immediately after.

I have to go now, otherwise I'll be late for bed.

Night night!

Yours truly,

Carter

Day 1: Expander Adventures

Hi there! Welcome to my blog about spacers, braces, expanders, and orthodontic experiences! I hope that my blog can be of service to explain some of the more difficult, confusing, and frustrating thing about orthodontics!

I'm Carter, and I currently have a very awesome expander (which glows in the dark), and I will be getting braces in August - September 2013, after my expander gets removed. As soon as I get those, I will tell you how to deal with them, but for now, I'll just talk about my expander and the spacers that preceded it.

Starting out with full day 1. This is very different from Day 1/2, when you get the expander, which is why there will be no information about that day.

Today was my first full day with an expander. Yesterday, I had a huge meltdown about the fact that I got a piece of naan bread stuck in the expander. It was kinda unnerving knowing I had food trapped between the unyielding roof of my mouth (which does, however, yield to my expander) and the even more unyielding metal object! Annoyingly, there is very little information about expanders out there, so all this is an adventure!

When you first get an expander, your mouth will be convinced it is food. That's how it's been since I got my expander. I'll leave it at that and let your imagination do the rest.

Also, there was less food stuck in my expander today, aside from a few grains of rice, some chocolate, and a black bean, but all that was much smaller than yesterday's not-so-minor annoyances and came out fairly quickly and easily.

I also got my first real expansion today. It doesn't hurt too much, which leads me to think that the people who say it hurts are either in the later portion of the expanding or just very sensitive to pain (or potentially confused). So yeah.

In terms of food, you will get something stuck in there the first day. You can't avoid it, but don't melt down. Just get a straw and some water, put the straw in the small gap at the front of the expander, and slurp to your  heart's content!

Now, onto my temporary lisp. The expander does that. It will get better. Trust me. My lisp has gotten better since yesterday. It's still there, and still very obvious, but it's getting better with every word I say.

Tomorrow will be even more interesting. Not sure what happens then, but it'll be fun!

Talk to y'all later!

Yours truly,
Carter