I am 21 years old and have always had very crooked teeth and never had braces or anything when I was younger. My two central incisors are really big, and they cover my lateral incisors. Also my canine teeth are very sharp and unaligned, which makes me kind of look like a vampire. I decided to get them fixed, and my dentist suggested I try Inman Aligner as I did not want the traditional braces. We took the prints, but then he found out I would need to wear an expander for 8 weeks before getting the Inman Aligner because we need to create space for the lateral incisors.I have to wear the expander for 23 hours, meaning I only have one hour a day to take it out to eat.
It has been three days since I got the expander, and I am so frustrated about how hard it is to talk, swallow, eat and even sleep. It is also painful but that is the least of my problems. I have no idea how I am supposed to be able to work on monday as I work in a store where I meet new customers every day. My lisp is ridiculous and I can't pronounce "e", "t", "k", "f" and obviously not "s". IT IS SO FRUSTRATING. My mouth is full of salvia and I am afraid of spitting on people when I talk with them. I have to keep reminding myself that it will be worth it in the end, but spending my summer like this is really demotivating. I have to turn the expander every 3-4 day, but I have already turned it twice as it felt loose. These days I have been eating really fast in order to "save" time so I have only had it our for about 30 minutes a day. Hopefully I will soon learn to eat with it in, so that I can rather take it out on work if I get into a situation where I have to explain or talk much lol.
I'll link to a picture of my expander. It looks like it would be easy as no one can see it, but the plastic is so thick in the middle that I have no chance of the pronouncing words where my tounge is used to hitting the top of my mouth. My next appointment at the dentist is july 7th and I pray that my teeth will have moved so that I do not have to keep it in longer than 8 weeks.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... pander.jpg
I will be updating this thread with my experience, and I would love it if anyone would like to share their own experience as well. I am pretty new to this forum, but it seems as if many people are going through the same thing.
(Sorry for bad english, it is not my first language)