Royal Wedding

It’s Friday, Friday!  Oh, I couldn’t resist as me-me-me so excited for the weekend….and the royal wedding!! 

We had a royal breakfast with scones and fruit at work in honour of the special day at work, but I couldn’t eat the scone with my tender teeth, and the fruit stung my tongue sore too much.  Ah, well, I still wore red, white and blue!  I read online that Kate Middleton also had lingual braces (braces on the inside of her teeth), but I’m not sure if they’re the same brand as mine. 

After trying to get through the day primarily wax-free yesterday, I have now accepted

My curious tongue found an uncovered bracket last night which caused that white thing.

that wax is my friend.  Last night, I thought I covered every bracket in my mouth with wax again, but I unfortunately missed a small part of the very back bracket on my bottom molar (the tooth at the very back of my mouth on the right hand side). 

Having a very curious tongue, it not only located the exposed bracket, but somehow, throughout the night, some small growth has appeared where it rested on that bracket.  It doesn’t hurt as much as the wire poking me did, but it’s certainly affecting my speech.

Speaking Changes

In all honesty, me, Miss Chatterbox, has been as quiet as possible the past two days at work.  When I hear myself talk, the lisp just echoes in my head. It’s also very hard to say certain words, especially those that end in hard consonants (like d and t).  It’s also been challenging to say the “s” sound, and many consonant blends and digraphs (sh and th are particularly difficult). 

I’m going to have to re-train my tongue where it needs to go to make those sounds.  It’s kind of like teaching ESL again, but to myself.  I am very much aware of every bracket in there, but I believe that if my tongue wasn’t so sore from the wire incident, I’d be speaking a lot better. 

For instance, my “th” isn’t coming out too well because it hurts to stick my tongue between my teeth to make it; I can really feel the brackets rubbing on that sore on my tongue.  It’s kind of like having a canker sore; you tend to favour that spot until it heals by not using is as you once did.  If you get these braces, make sure that you go to the doctor right away if a wire’s poking you.

Open Bite: To protect the brackets, there's blue adhesive on my top back teeth forcing my mouth to remain open. A normal part of the process!

I think the “s” sound is more like a “sch” sound (think Schan Fraschischco instead of San Francisco) due to the air escaping through my open bite.  It’ll probably take the longest to perfect because I’ll need to wait for that bite to close.

Eating Changes

As for eating, my teeth are quite tender.  I am exclusively choosing foods that I can swallow from a spoon or that require minimal chewing with my back teeth.  My meals have consisted of chilli, macaroni salad, pudding, soup, etc.  I’m having macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight.  I kind of feel like a kid again!  It’s very similar to having braces on the outside of my teeth.

I also didn’t realize how much I like to lick my lips.  I’m not sure if this is a normal thing, or a Jacqui thing.  However, over the past two days, when I eat, I continually dab my mouth with a napkin because my tongue’s so sore, I don’t want to stick it out and lick my lips.  That curry dinner I had the other night required quite a lot of napkin dabbing.

It’s also taking me a lot longer to eat.  I notice I’m eating a lot less, too.  When I look around at people eating near me, they’re finished well before I am half-way done! I’m chewing so carefully, and taking the time to suck the food stuck in my brackets out of them before taking my next bite.

Finally, you have no idea how many times you flip food around inside of your mouth before you swallow it until you do it with hidden braces.  I’m not a biology major, but I’m guessing it’s to prepare the food for digestion (moisten it, make it smaller, etc.).  Seriously, the next time you eat, think about how many times your tongue touches the inside of your teeth. 

Every time I move my tongue, it rubs against the brackets.  It only hurts where that sore is, but I’m conscious of the other brackets.  I’m finding that I put the food in as far back as I can on the right hand side because that’s where my teeth touch and it forms a barrier between my tongue and my brackets.

Those are the major things I’ve noticed so far. My family makes fun of the way I speak the most, but they’ve also been unbelievably helpful with making sure I have access to soft foods.  It’s a bit hard as I can’t drive to get what I want with my broken foot.  People at work notice I sound differently, but say my lisp sounds much better than they expected it to be.