I can luckily say that I am no longer experiencing the wonders and absolute pleasures of having to wear a plate anymore. It is a complete and utter death trap. A lisp-producing, liberal saliva-giving piece of orthodontic technology which I am absolutely glad is behind me.
I wore the removable maxillary arch expander plate 23/7 for 3 months since Tuesday, 5 October 2010—minus about an hour a day for eating. I used a winding prong weekly to tighten the plate by 45° in each of the three dimensions. It opened up my arch and gave me a little gap between my front teeth—months 2 and 3 are shown below—which was as expected.
It gets smelly, you can't completely close your teeth down together, and chewing gum—which I did para-religiously—is pretty hard to do. What can I say, it's great!
Maybe I'm most definitely overreacting here, and if you ever have to wear one of these, just think of how much it'll be worth it in the end, but this thing is horrible. The worst of it is the socially-debilitating lisp which is most likely the cause of the profuse amounts of saliva I had constantly pooling in my mouth. It was really hard for someone like me who never really does shut up.
It didn't hurt at all, which was a positive. It just felt like a firm pressure behind my teeth and upper roof of mouth. The only real good thing about it was that it wasn't very visible, but the clincher was that it was removable. If it wasn't, I'm not too sure how well I would have fared if it weren't.
Getting accustomed to the plate being in my mouth, and my speech around it, did get a little bit better after the first couple of weeks, but it wasn't anything to get really excited about. It didn't completely feel or sound normal, even after the first month and a half, but I did just get over it—aside from the speech which made me sound like, to be honest, I had a problem. I really wanted to be done with it, but not so much completely, because I wasn't looking forward to braces. Catch-22, really. What I can say was I was extremely happy when I got my blue, baby spacers put in today and only had to wear the plate for 16 hours a day until Friday, 28 January 2011, the date when I get my braces.
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did you get corrective jaw surgery?
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't. If you read through my blog, this whole story is about correcting an underbite without surgery.
ReplyDeleteAll it has taken to correct my underbite was the expander and braces. I'm very grateful for that, indeed.
wat about an upper arch expander does anyone know what they are like im having one in a few weeks because of my very narrow upper demtal arch!:(
ReplyDeleteUpper arch expander? I think that might just be another word, if not the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI had a plate expander for my upper arch, so I assume that they are the same thing. I had a narrow upper arch with not much space for my teeth, and the reason for my underbite, along with my jaw structure.
The question you have to ask is if yours will be removable or permanent. I had the faux luxury of having a removable one, which, while being quite bearable because by all means could be removed, was no consolation for having to wear it all the tine, anyway. It was great to remove for eating or brushing my teeth, or that special date, but it was indeed the lesser of two evils.
Good luck with it. I hated my expander plate. Wishing you a flying time.
So once you got used to it, did you start talking normally?
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to be Harry Houdini to get your speech around this mouth trap!
ReplyDeleteI never completely did get used to it and my speech always sounded lispy to me. I don't think anyone could ever completely get used to it. It's bulky in your mouth, like you have something in there all the time like food, which you do.
When I first got it, the lisp was really bad. It was very embarrassing to speak and it look a lot of practice to get used to it. In about a week my speech had drastically improved. After two weeks, I was pretty much used to it and my speech, tounge and mouth, as well as saliva control was accustomed. After three weeks, I would say, I was speaking pretty much the same as I was at the end of three months.
Naturally, everyone will be different and their speech may be able to camouflage, or more easily adapt to the lisping, and not be noticeable at all. I could always hear my lisp, it wasn't me and my normal voice. One of my friends said I sounded "normal" but a cuter and sweeter version of myself. This really did mean that my voice was different, but not completely abnormal sounding to someone who would have never heard my voice before. Oddly enough, I pretty much always felt comfortable talking to my friends and family who knew my voice and could tell the difference, and were ultimately understanding, whereas talking to strangers and people I've just met or in a public arena made me feel self-conscious, coming off with a slight speech impediment.
Everyone is understandably different in terms of actual physical adaptation and experience, whether present as an emotional or a physical barrier to speaking. In the end, I never completely spoke normal to what I know my normal to be, and that wasn't a nice feeling for me. Would I take the experience back? No, I wouldn't, so the pain and annoyance was worth a bit of social suffering and minor identity loss. I am a drama queen, most probably, yes. But, really, I hated it.
You do get used to it, but you'll never speak "normally". Until you take it out, that is! That's also if the plate is removable, as some oher variants are not.
I felt really negatively towards the plate, but after a while, you get used to it, like with anything. The first few weeks are by far the worst, and speech only gets better with time and practice. Do a lot of talking on the phone, or read aloud to yourself, vlog about it. I did, and no, it didn't magically give me my normal speech back, nor did it improve instantly, but it did get better. I promise it will!
How old were you when you had it?
ReplyDeletehiya! im absolutely loving reading your blog posts! there really arent many underbite resources out there as youve mentioned so your fantastic teeth transformation is a god-send! im wondering, are you based in sydney australia by any chance? if so, which orthodontist did you go to? I think we have quite a similar case here & currently, the orthodontist i'm seeing is suggesting $9800 for full braces (+$700 for clear ceramics) and no mention of an expander! recommendation on finding a credible ortho (fully qualified + experience etc) would also be fantastic! thankyou lovely!
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteDo you have to wear a retainer device after completing the treatment? I heard that when adults having their teeth corrected by only braces, then they have to wear a retainer so that teeth don't go back to previous position.
If more people that write articles really concerned themselves with writing great content like you, more readers would be interested in their writings. Thank you for caring about your content.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes Ceramic Braces expensive?
Both of my upper and lower teeth's are narrow can I get palatal expander for my lower maxilla as well?
ReplyDelete