I have been cranking and turning my expander, and I am now DONE with expanding my face!
The first 13 days I turned the expander twice a day, and from April 3rd I had to turn it once a day, for 7 more days, 20 days of turning in total.
Like I mentioned earlier, it doesn't hurt at all to turn the expander itself, but it's a bit uncomfortable on the psychological side. On day 2 or 3 the expander key came out too early when I was turning, so the hole in the front wasn't visible for my next turn. Had to have my wonderful boyfriend to try and help me, sat in the kitchen with flashlight from the cell phone and a small pick that you use for opening iPhone SIM trays... Heh. It worked, and boy was I relieved. I almost started to cry!
I didn't really see that big of a change the first 4-5 days, and was wondering if I really was doing it right. It was easter holiday, so I couldn't just call my orthodontist and ask either.
But, after that I really started to see a difference. The total width of my tooth gap was about 5-6mm, and by April 14th my orthodontist was happy enough about the expansion so I could stop. He put on elastics on the six front teeth to fill the gap (or the "family reunion" as I like to call it).
It's a good thing that I don't have much feeling in my upper jaw still, because at the rate that the teeth are storming back, I'm guessing it normally would be agonizingly painful. Silver lining, I guess!
I still have my sutures in, the will come out by themselves in 1-2 weeks time from now, and I can't fucking WAIT. It's still healing, so sometimes it hurts to smile and laugh. My inside upper lip is so tight, so I feel I have a smaller lip, and a bigger gap between my lips when resting. My nose has also gotten wider?? What the fuck, I didn't even think about that, so now I'm super conscious about it. Hate having big buck teeth and open mouth, this isn't helping at all. I hope it gets better over time, I feel I look like a horse now.
I actually made a GIF of me turning my expander for the last time, I was so happy I was done with this crap. I wasn't able to make it small enough to fit on this blog, so just follow this link right here:
https://i.imgur.com/jc19zcn.gifv
(It might take some time load.)
I also thought it'd be fun to show you what the progress is like in GIF format, this is worth 20 days of turning:
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| Isn't it neat? Also ignore the bad angles and skin. |
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| Smile pre-op |
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| Smile from today, post-op & post-expansion (pardon the makeup-less face) |
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| Front view pre-op. Excuse my slightly drunken face |
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| Post-op, tooth gap at its biggest. |
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| Front view from today. Look at that fucking nose, I'm glad I know how to contour. |
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| X-ray pre-op, pre-braces |
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| X-ray post-op, post-expansion |
Obviously I still have a massive overbite, but the braces will hopefully take care of that. Hopefully.
I have a check-up appointment at the Haukeland hospital on May 15th, hopefully they will be happy about the progress! They even took pictures during the surgery, and I am SO excited to see them. The surgeon is so skeptical of me seeing them, but I have a good dose of morbid curiosity. If everything goes well at the check-up, I'm (hopefully) able to go to my orthodontist and get this damn hell device out of my mouth. I wasn't aware I had to keep the expander in for such a long time after the surgery, but I guess it has to stay there until the bone has healed completely and settled down a bit.
So, the next date I'm actually looking forward to, is May 22nd, the day of the expander removal! I'm going to name it my person day of FREEDOM, and eat whatever the fuck I want, and constantly saying words I've been struggling with the past 7 months!!
I'm not sorry if this post is aggressive or negative, I want to let people to know that this isn't a walk in the park, and a lot of conflicting feelings are involed. I just want this to be over with, I want to look normal again.
