Getting my expander... not so bad.. well sort of

Today well actually yesterday I started to outwardly get my brace face look about me. I went to my appointment and they took out the spacers, easy enough. I closed my mouth and could feel all the little spaces and even swallowing my spit was so strange. I feel sorry for the people that have side gaps because of the weird suction feeling you must have every time you swallow anything! That being said an assistant (I should probably learn their names) started to fit my expander in my mouth but my again my mouth is a weird special case so Dr. Kolodziej worked on me instead of the assistant.  "Open, touch together, bite, open, touch, bite.." is all I heard & did until the expander was fully on & cemented to my teeth or at least I'm pretty sure that's how it works. I read my informative paper work about how I probably will have issues speaking and getting used to how it all works, I realized ohhh how true that little paper was! I was practicing saying things that I normally would and I almost gagged myself. I'm not exactly sure how that happened but the only way to not throw up was to just stop talking! Such a weird sensation.
Eating is a completely horrible awful thing to attempt. I thought in my head oh soup will work because it is so simple to eat. As I was making it I realized I can barely even swallow my own spit how in the world did I think I was going to be able to swallow broth. But I attempted it anyway because I knew I eventually had to eat something & my growling stomach was a little bit of an influence on me too!
Bad. Idea.
I ended up looking like a baby bird waiting for it's mama to regurgitate into its mouth! What you don't know what I mean? Well I could only swallow the soup by tilting my head backwards... like so

So needless to say going out to eat is off the list for a loooong time.... ok probably just a little time, I like to go out to eat wayyyy to much to give it up the entire time of having this contraption on.
 On top of tilting my head backwards I also had to put my tongue on the other side of the bar/expander in my mouth & then swallow. Let's face it if you can't put your tongue to the roof of your mouth not everything is going to go down your throat. Well I was a failing child & gave up on soup so I tried a peach thinking this will be more solid.... wrong-o! A peach is so juicy, what was I thinking? I decided to give up food & just starve to death.
Hours later I tried pasta & chicken I had nearly a cup of pasta to give my stomach something because the pain was too much. But then decided that would be sufficient enough. Wrong-o again! I felt like walking to the door of my house was so much exercise that I might faint. I decided I should be an adult about this and just eat even if it's the most uncomfortable thing in my life to do! So there I sat, the pasta & me, me & the pasta. Baby bird Michelle tilted her head back ever so awkwardly and ate most of that pasta! My lovely mother even made jokes but I toughed it out & conquered that stomach which was aching for food. I also ate an apple afterwards. The expander didn't hurt all day, it is just the oddness of trying to swallow food or a drink that is making my life so difficult.
I decided to research & discovered that I'm not the only one with these issues but "you will get used to it". Well ya know what I want to be used to it now!
Eating was one thing but let me just brief you on speaking. I can't really even pronounce the word speaking so it's a good thing this isn't a video blog!
Words I can hardly say- you,me,be,need,eat & so many more that I was really shocked about.
I've changed the word eat to "consume food" because I can pronounce that clearly. & instead of saying "you" I just say the persons name. So for example as I'm sitting talking to my friend Holly I said "Holly was so right when Holly said that about walking" Poor Holly started talking in 3rd person after that conversation! It's all about how I can try to use another word to mean what I am really trying to spit out.

Here is my super special customized expander. Dr. Kolodziej said it was as small as they could get it because it's easy for a kid to have to get used to an expander but as an adult it is much more difficult.

So all I have to do it put a little key device in the center little tiny hole, push it up, and push it back & that is one turn. I'll do that 12 times & return to him in 20 days!
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I've also now had my turn at sleeping in this and it's not comfortable. When I woke up aches & pains all around. Not to mention I thought I was going to be able to speak normal but that was a big False! I'm still avoiding all "e" sounding words as of now! I'm just glad I didn't drool all over the place, at least I controlled that.