CHAPTER 5
Over the next week, I search for a speech therapist online. Since talking is my biggest weakness, I need to get that figured out. After looking for a while at different therapists, I find the perfect one. She has experience with orthodontic patients and has an adult-only facility. I schedule an appointment for next Tuesday, my day off.
It’s surprising how the simplest, most taken-for-granted actions are now impossible with my braces. I can’t even go 15 minutes without needing a towel to dry my saliva-filled mouth. Swallowing is still undoable. And most annoying of all, any single food particle that gets stuck on my lips, teeth, braces, herbst appliances, or expanders has to be removed by hand. This is because I can’t lick my lips or gather food particles with my tongue thanks to my tongue cage. So, I pretty much spend 10% of my time at meals actually eating and the other 90% hand-cleaning gunk out of my braces.
The next days at work are absolute hell as coworkers from the diner incident give me snears and laugh behind my back. One guy, Mathew, walks straight up to me and says, “I’ve seen braces, but what the hell do YOU have?” I walk away with my head down because I know I’ll only embarrass myself more by trying to answer him.
Finally the day of speech therapy! I can’t wait to get my life back on track. I step into a brightly lit room where a receptionist tells me to wait while my therapist gets ready. A few minutes later, a woman walks in. “Hi, I’m Monica, your speech therapist. What are you hoping to accomplish today?”
I try my best to say something, ANYthing, but as per usual, I sound like a gurgling mess.
She cuts in, “okay then… we’ll get started right away on that.”
For the rest of the day, she coaches me through speech exercises and different sounds. But with the tongue cage preventing any necessary tongue movements and the acrylic blocks filling my mouth with saliva, I make absolutely zero progress. Monica’s reassuring voice tells me it will get better with practice, but I just sigh. It’s useless.
