Palate Expansion Appliance

Well, here I am day one with the RPE in. This definitely feels weird. I am salivating profusely, and I can taste a bit of the cement still. Not shown in the picture are the hook type thingies on the outer side of the bands. They are annoying and I'll need to put wax on them when the eventually start irritating my cheeks.

It doesn't really hurt at all. Talking is ok but not perfect. Imagine holding something in your mouth while trying to talk. I seem to have trouble with C's, H's, P's, Q's, T's, and V's so far.

Drinking feels like a fountain in my mouth, the water sort of filters through the appliance and I have to smack my lips to swallow it, sort of. It's hard to describe.

Eating is a total chore now. Like doing gymnastics in my mouth. I managed to slowly eat a Nutrigrain bar and a banana this afternoon. That wasn't so bad. For dinner it took over an hour to eat a can of brown beans and a piece of bread. I constantly have to work food out from between the top of the appliance and the top of my mouth. My first strategy for eating was to just let food build up in that space whereby the second mouthful pushes the first mouthful down so I can swallow. That sort of works but not great, and I can only let a little bit of food build up before I feel like gagging. The other strategy is to try to chew in my cheeks like a chipmunk, again, sort of works but still gets pushed up there via the space on the side. Either way I have to keep swishing with water as I eat, and chew very thoroughly. I also tried some lettuce, that didn't work too well.

Dr W wants to see me on March 25th at 8:30am to begin expanding. He thinks I'll need to have someone do it for me. He said I can get him to do it if necessary via stopping in to the office or coming over to his place since he doesn't live too far from here. I'll certainly give it a try myself though. I know other people have been able to do it themselves.