Pheealzabraces: Bracket Installation: 3 days out

I just finished browsing Lingual Braces (the trade name for the Incognito type) blogs to see if what I have been and continue to experience was in the norm, which evidently it is. I am referring to an unexpected and extremely intense "world of pain", in the immortal words of Walter Sobchak.

After about three and a half hours in the chair at Dr. Hall's office which encompassed the cleaning and prep of the teeth, the application of the brackets (two #12 & #21 (I think) came off with the trays and had to be re applied), and the wiring of the brackets I expected there to be a degree of aching pain in my jaws and teeth, since the basic work of the brackets and wires is to move teeth around in existing bone. What I didn't foresee was the difficulty in speaking immediately after the installation of the brackets and the development of painful ulcers on the underside of the side of my tongue near the back from rubbing against the brackets.

The speaking issues (which still haven't gone away) were evident immediately, and were not all that surprising. It's primarily in the from of a lisp, but there is also a good deal of extra salivation that goes on, resulting in having to pause fairly frequently when speaking to deal with (swallow) the aforementioned saliva. The tongue ulcers were a bit more surprising and definitely more annoying. Brace wax and Benzocaine based oral topicals have become my new best friend. There's nothing like having a band of sharp brackets with wire running between them on the inside of your teeth to remind you of how much your tongue moves around in your mouth when eating, coughing, clearing your throat, and hacking.

I bring up hacking because on top of the PAOO surgery and the braces I seem to have caught a dose of a flu of one sort or another. My chest was getting that lovely tightening sensation when I woke up Monday morning for the appointment at Dr. Hall's office and my throat had progressed to the classic hot scratchy state by that evening. The fever (such as it was) has since broken and I'm at the achy, tired, expectorating stage.

The blogs (none more recent than 2012, and the majority being from across the pond in GB) are a bit reassuring, speaking of the tongue pain and the speech issues and stating that, while the first week or two are a bit Hellish, things do settle down and one will get accustomed to the braces.  I've never been the most patient of people, but have learned the prudence of it in the past few years, so reading these entries has helped.

So has the Ninja. I think I'm drinking as many smoothies as I was immediately following the surgery. Soft food isn't too painful, but the (disgusting but inevitable) feeling of food of any type getting caught in the brackets is something that I tend to avoid right now. It's easily rectified with a thorough brushing immediately following the meal, but the smoothies and shakes make satisfying hunger a quicker (depending on the prep time for the smoothie) and cleaner (to an extent - I still brush afterwards) proposition.

Based on the blogs the eighth day is a milestone in terms of adjusting to the brackets and wire, so I'll plan on posting on this topic again then if there are no pressing developments before then. With what's going on in the world over the past ten days (not to discount the entirety of 2016) there may be additional posts on the general state of things once I'm over this lovely crud that is making its way slowly out of my system.