RPE 1 - Tongue 0

My tongue is definitely taking a bashing from my RPE at the moment, and its been a little sore for the past couple of days. Am going to see Dr O next Saturday, so only have to make it through the week and if its still bothering me then hopefully he'll be able to do something about it. The really weird thing, my first RPE that I had last year, never bothered my tongue in the slightest. I don't know if this one is just situated slightly different in the roof of my mouth.

Got Me An RPE!

I went in and had my expander cemented tonight, and Dr O turned it once before I left the office. Its not bothering me too much at the moment, it sure feels like I have a lot of junk in my mouth though. My speech has definitely been affected, and there is a lot of unnecesary drool being mass produced - apparently the expander seems quite digestable to some part of my body. My only real complaint about it, is that I can't bite down and get any contact now - as I end up biting on some metal tubes on the bracket. I'll have to see if I can cope with it, and get used to it, it is opening up my bite but I'm not sure its supposed to or not.

Eating is fun, whilst I was at the ortho appointment, my husband made us a pizza for dinner (actually made it from scratch, rather than store bought or ordered it, far healthier that way - and way less cheese and grease!), it took me a long time to finish my two slices - and each bite had to be washed down with water. But I don't think I've totally forgotten how to eat with an expander, as it wasn't as awful as the first time I tried eating with my first expander last year.

All in all, I'm very happy to have the expander and I hope that the open state of my bite due to how the expander sits will solve my crossbite!

Expander, Take Two!

Well, its nearly time to go and get my second expander. I'm not really all that bothered by it, the first one never annoyed me all that much. It seems quite a lot of hardware to take at once, but a lot of people have this combination I guess, and some even have surgery to contend with on top of that. I've definitely been feeling quite stagnant, even though Dr O seems pleased with how things are progressing. I'm leaving work 4pm tomorrow afternoon to go get it cemented in, and luckily enough my boss is letting me take off work on Thursday - I really don't want to be dealing with my clients whilst drooling! Hopefully I should be good for Friday, and back to normal.

Will show off photos tomorrow night, promise!

new wires + powerchains = OWWWW!

So I had my third adjustment today, and all went well. Dr O is quite pleased with how we are progressing, obviously my crossbite is still an issue and we're not quite ready for elastics yet. I did come home with two spacers on each side for the [6], so tonight I do have two rather unhappy upper [6]'s. A new powerchain from [3] to [3], so the front 6 teeth on the uppers are now chained up together. I also had a wire change, now sporting .18 NiTi's upper and lower. Apparently the wire will not be hooking up to the bands that will be installed to hold the RPE immediately, eventually he said, but not for a whilst - so I had the wire changed today along with all my ligs.

I don't know if anyone else notices this, but getting my bottom ligs changed, not a problem...but the tops - OWWWW! I think its because the ceramic brackets are so much bigger than the metal ones I have on the lowers, therefore the ligs have to be stretched and pulled more to go on. I'm in quite a lot of pain and discomfort tonight, due to (a) new powerchain, (b) new wires and (c) spacers annoying the [6]'s and the [6]'s in turn sharing the love by pushing on everyone else.

Next Wednesday I get to go back and have the new expander cemented in, which I am looking forward to in some ways. I know its going to be a pain in the behind for a couple days with speaking, drooling and food smushing up there until I retrain my mouth on how to eat food, chew and swallow with said food being eaten rather than sacrificed and smushed to the great expander. It really is possible, just difficult at first, but eating can be relearned for the sake of nourishment and not having a completely disgusting appliance at the end of each meal.

Here are some photos, taken from April 2006 and then from today - I think it shows quite a difference!