Chapter 4. This isn’t funny anymore.
If day one was annoyingly over-lubricated, day two was impossibly so. I went to work at the busy massage therapy clinic that I own and practice at, worried that I would drool on my clients during their treatments, While that did not, in fact, happen, I found myself horribly self-conscious of the frequency and volume of my newly-learned swallowing skills. As hard as I tried to just rest my tongue quietly in my mouth, I couldn’t resist the primal urge to suck on the crossbar that rests across the roof of my mouth like a lozenge. This triggered even more saliva, and a few times throughout the day, I had to bite down on a handkerchief to absorb what I could not swallow.
Talking proved to be an even bigger challenge, my considerable lisp muddled my speech, and the brackets on the outside of the acrylic, which will later have brace wires attached, mercilessly scraped the insides of my lips and cheeks while I struggled to make myself understood. With three of my five clients that day being new and requiring assessments, and the other two being chatty regulars, I essentially spoke non-stop for 8 hours. By the time I got home, my face was puffy and swollen, my mouth stung with sores, and I was exhausted.
My loving husband arrived home from the grocery store with two things that I never thought I would be so happy to see: salmon and Orajel numbing gel. For 48 hours, I had eaten no solid foods. Not yet accustomed to the limitations of biting and swallowing, smoothies and soups were the only thing I could manage, and once my painkillers kicked in and my mouth didn’t hurt as much, I realized that I was starving. I applied the numbing gel to the inside of my cheeks and lips while we made dinner. More saliva, fueled in part by the gel and part by my hunger. I managed to eat one or two ounces of salmon in the time it took my husband to eat his entire meal. Each bite was tentatively pressed between teeth and acrylic before essentially being mashed against the crossbar with my tongue and swallowed whole. I felt simultaneously like a snake swallowing its prey and a dog with peanut butter stuck to the roof of its mouth. I gave up after a while, and opted to get my calories from the better half of a bottle of wine, which offered its own pleasant numbing effect
