Yup, you read that right, the palatal expander lasted for one whole week!  We even went on vacation with our water pik in tow and wouldn’t you just have guessed that the night before our follow up appointment with the ortho, my 8 y.o. walks into my room and says, “mom, something’s not right with my expander.”  I get up to look and can clearly see one side of the expander just hanging down and not at all attached!  I’m like, “what the $%#!?”

So, I tell him to push it back up and see if he can keep it there for the night until we get to the ortho in the morning.  It’s still very much attached on the other side and pulling it downward actually hurt the teeth it was still attached to.

Next morning we are headed to the ortho and needless to say she is not ecstatic with Gavin’s expander having lasted a mere week!  Neither.  Am.  I.  We haven’t even paid for the first one and now we need to tack on a second one that has to be made.  This 5 min. follow up appt. turned into an hour ordeal of new impressions, fittings for brackets and spacers being put back in. Grrrrr….

Of course it would be my son unable to keep his tongue and fingers off of the metal contraption in his mouth,the incessant wiggling and prodding around that caused a stress fracture on the one bracket, thus breaking it apart completely.  My son IS  however, the glass is half full kind of kid, so he impishly remarks to me and his ortho that at least he can eat whatever he wants for a full week, right?  He’s lucky there was a room full of witnesses.  No, seriously.

That is our update for week freaking 1.  Yes week one and only one.  Will let you all know how we progress, should we progress….Anyone else go through a palatal expander like this?

http://www.bracesbythesea.com/