Almost Two Months and Cranking...

Well, I'm still cranking away with my wrench...this time in the right direction. My tongue has been having a rough time of it lately with the widening of the expander and the opening it's creating between the acrylic part of my expander.

I find my tongue is doing a lot of work by trying to get food out of all those cracks and crevices and it's paying a heavy price for it's diligence. I carry a portable waterpik and use a stronger one at home but sometimes I just can't use either because I'm out and about so I've made a pact with myself that I'm going to try my best to utilize it more often. When I can't I'm either using a toothpick...now that's a pretty sight, let me tell you...or I just get by using my poor punctured tongue.

I've been doing the salt rinses religiously but it's not helping much and I know it's because I'm not changing the behavior...and now that's it's feeling like a ragged piece of meat I'm reconsidering that change of behavior.

All is all everything is going good. I'm noticing some spaces developing on the upper but not much is happening on the bottom yet. With the uppers I've had to resort to using wax today because my lips keep getting hung up on the tops of the brackets where you'd be putting rubber bands if you were wearing them. Not sure what they call them but I'm going to find out.

It will be two months on July 5th since installations...hmmm...not sure when the braces will go on but not too worried about that at this point and time.

First Pallet Expander Check-Up

Well...yesterday I was all excited about going into the ortho to see how he thought things were progressing. I knew not to expect to much because it's just been six weeks but you should have seen my face when the assistant went to turn my expander and she did it backwards from what I was shown how to do it...well, when I spoke up she was dumbfounded that I'd been turning it backwards all these last six weeks. I could have misunderstood but I remember vividly the other assistant showing me how the wrench needed to be used and what I had to do. All this time I was doing nothing with my pallet...how depressing that was to hear! She turned my expander four times and wow...I could feel the pressure. I was thinking all of this time that WOW...it doesn't feel that bad at all...well now I find out....SIX WEEKS LATER...I was doing it all wrong! OH Well....whatcha gonna do??? Right!!!