And, can I brag for a minute? ...My teeth are FINALLY touching on the left side of my mouth! The first time they actually made contact, there was a clicking noise. I looked around for a minute to find the source of the click before I realized it was actually my teeth and I was hearing it in my left ear for the first time ever! The left side made the contact clicking noise slightly after the right side. It sounds crazy, but it was such a foreign sound that I wasn't sure what it was right away. Obviously, it only took a second or two to figure it out. Thank goodness I was home alone because my family might have thought I'd lost my mind. I just kept clicking my teeth together over and over, celebrating a small victory in this journey I'm on.
With all this movement, my soft tissue in the lower jaw is making a lot of changes, too. There was a week that my teeth moved so quickly that my lips developed a bunch of canker sores. The brackets were rubbing against the tissue so much. I ended up looking like I'd been in a fight--my lips were so swollen! They did finally clear up after about 4 or 5 days, after a lot of hydrogen peroxide treatment and an abundance of my new best friend--dental wax!
The muscles in my neck and chin are moving along with the teeth, too! I'm not going to go so far as to say it's almost like a face lift, but... It's definitely a noticeable change. My entire profile is changing.
With the addition of the TAD, I've had multiple rubber bands in my mouth now. I had a couple of "buttons" put on the bottom left arch on the inside (tongue side) of my teeth. The ortho folks call them buttons, but I call them spikes! When the rubber bands are not on the buttons, they feel quite sharp against my tongue. The rubber bands have to come off every time I eat.
And, speaking of eating... Just a couple weeks ago, I got my tongue stuck on the buttons. Now, let me preface this by saying I've had these things in my mouth for MONTHS. This had not happened before and I pray it will not happen again. I was chewing some pizza with a rather thick crust--and talking with food in my mouth--and the soft underside of my tongue got caught up in the buttons. Yeah, it hurt a little bit. I started panicking, thinking that I might choke with all that bread in my mouth. Fortunately, my family was right there with me. My mom was trying to keep me calm, my husband was asking how he could help, and I was just there with a stuck tongue and a mouth fully of gummy pizza. Eventually, I realized that I needed to get the bite out of my mouth. With all this metal in there, I couldn't move my tongue around the food. I asked for a spoon, which sounded more like "Oon! Oon! Et me a oon!" Thankfully, someone figured it out and brought me one. I scooped out my bite and was able to get my tongue unstuck.
In the meantime, I've learned not to shove such big bites into my mouth. With this expander and the buttons, the food capacity is significantly smaller. You'd think I'd lose some weight with that concept. You'd be wrong. Since everything I can eat has to be fairly soft (my teeth are very sensitive), I'm mostly eating carbs. That hasn't been good for swimsuit season.
Thankfully, it's now August. Swimsuit season is coming to an end. My favorite time of year is on its way--Autumn! I can't wait to see what changes the cooler weather brings. I'm hoping to be able to take some updated pictures for my next post. It's hard to believe the difference just 6 months has brought!
