Day Three with the RPE/ 15 hours til SARPE and Counting....
Today was day three with this horrible appliance. My mouth is now resigned to this metal intrusion and I'm no longer salivating like a dog (thank you Lord!.) With that being said, I have nothing else positive to say about this thing. My tongue is still very sore, and I have wax everywhere to cover any place that might rub. Talking is still tough, although slightly better than yesterday. I do not see it improving significantly in the next few months. I think I'm just going to have to deal with sounding like I have a serious speech impediment for awhile. Good thing I work with young kids, as they don't really care what I sound like.
As I mentioned yesterday eating is brutal, and that has not changed. I find myself eating next to nothing as I just quite frankly don't have it in me to deal with it. It is so much work,and so frustrating. Everything I eats goes above the appliance and gets stuck in that little space. Because the appliance is the shape of an X food gets trapped in the edges and is like impossible to get out. It is extremely unpleasant to say the least! Not sure if this will improve or not....today I had a smoothie for breakfast, a bit of scrambled eggs, a banana, and a few cups of coffee. The most enjoyable part was the coffee. Can a person live for 4 months on coffee alone? Perhaps I should test that theory out! LOL..
Tomorrow is my SARPE surgery. I'm eerily calm about the whole thing. I'm even sorta freaking myself out. I keep thinking it will hit me and I will eventually get nervous (perhaps tomorrow morning maybe??) but for now I'm resigned to the whole thing, and actually looking forward to just getting it over with.
I will post tomorrow after surgery with pics! :)
For those of you who don't know what a SARPE is, it is a Surgically Assisted Rapid Palate expansion. When you are an adult your palate bones become fused, and cannot be expanded with just an appliance alone (as say a childs could.) So you go in to an oral surgeon and for the sake of keeping this simple, they basically fracture your palate. They go in right above the molars in the back on both sides, and make an incision right above the front teeth underneath the sinuses. They take a chisel and with a couple good whacks separate the palate from the sinus area and the upper rear palate connections are separated. Basically they are releasing these bones to their pre fused state. Then an expansion appliance is installed and is turned once or twice a day over a period of time to allow the palate to expand and fill in with new bone growth. It sounds very bad, and invasive! However it actually is not near as bad as it sounds, and is a relatively common procedure for adult palate expansion. Recovery time is about 1 week total with the first 2-3 days being the worst (mostly due to swelling). Most people have little to no pain, and manage discomfort with over the counter products such as Motrin or Tylenol.
Brandy
As I mentioned yesterday eating is brutal, and that has not changed. I find myself eating next to nothing as I just quite frankly don't have it in me to deal with it. It is so much work,and so frustrating. Everything I eats goes above the appliance and gets stuck in that little space. Because the appliance is the shape of an X food gets trapped in the edges and is like impossible to get out. It is extremely unpleasant to say the least! Not sure if this will improve or not....today I had a smoothie for breakfast, a bit of scrambled eggs, a banana, and a few cups of coffee. The most enjoyable part was the coffee. Can a person live for 4 months on coffee alone? Perhaps I should test that theory out! LOL..
Tomorrow is my SARPE surgery. I'm eerily calm about the whole thing. I'm even sorta freaking myself out. I keep thinking it will hit me and I will eventually get nervous (perhaps tomorrow morning maybe??) but for now I'm resigned to the whole thing, and actually looking forward to just getting it over with.
I will post tomorrow after surgery with pics! :)
For those of you who don't know what a SARPE is, it is a Surgically Assisted Rapid Palate expansion. When you are an adult your palate bones become fused, and cannot be expanded with just an appliance alone (as say a childs could.) So you go in to an oral surgeon and for the sake of keeping this simple, they basically fracture your palate. They go in right above the molars in the back on both sides, and make an incision right above the front teeth underneath the sinuses. They take a chisel and with a couple good whacks separate the palate from the sinus area and the upper rear palate connections are separated. Basically they are releasing these bones to their pre fused state. Then an expansion appliance is installed and is turned once or twice a day over a period of time to allow the palate to expand and fill in with new bone growth. It sounds very bad, and invasive! However it actually is not near as bad as it sounds, and is a relatively common procedure for adult palate expansion. Recovery time is about 1 week total with the first 2-3 days being the worst (mostly due to swelling). Most people have little to no pain, and manage discomfort with over the counter products such as Motrin or Tylenol.
Brandy
posted by Brandyleigh35 @ 5:47 PM
3 Comments:
At 5:18 AM,
Graham said…
As much as it sucks Brandy, you really have to push yourself to eat as much as possible after surgery, otherwise you may be compromising the healing. Dinner tonight took me 1/3 less time to eat tonight so I hope that means it's getting easier. Still lots of foods I haven't tried yet though, so who knows. My speech isn't great yet either but someone posted saying that after two weeks it should be back to normal or close to it. I hope that's true!
At 7:03 AM,
Brandyleigh35 said…
I know I need to eat Graham. I will probably be drinking most of my calories. Smoothies and milkshakes seem the way to go right now. My Tongue is sore. Not just surface sore from rubbing, but like sore from doing all the talking, and contorted movements to deal with this thing. I'm looking forward to a couple of days of rest and not having to talk very much. I'm sure eventually it will get better, but for now, I'm gonna just chill and stick with liquid and very soft foods like applesauce etc.
Brandy
At 12:22 PM,
sasicas said…
I just want to thank you for making this blog. Im slowly making my way through it. My husbands SARPE is tomorrow and we have not been given much information. So thank you so much for documenting this for us!
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