The first thing I realized was that my lips could no longer covered my teeth. I had to purse them out to get them over the ridiculously bulky lip bumpers that “might” help my case. The next thing I noticed was the massive amount of drool that was forming because my tongue had nowhere to go with the expanders. I couldn’t decide if the lack of space in my mouth was worse than the unnatural position my jaw was now in from the herbst.
“How does it feel?” asked Julia.
“Naaa good,” I said my speech coming out garbled. Not only could my lips not fully close from the lip bumpers, I was horrified to realize that my mouth wasn’t really opening either. Trying to talk caused a huge glob of spit to form that I struggled to swallow with all of the appliances.
“I thought your speech might be a little messy,” Julia laughed. “That’s so cute!”
I wanted to cry as I felt like she was openly mocking my discomfort.
“Let’s get you a mirror so you can see your new look!”
It was honestly worse than I could imagine. My cheeks were puffed out from the herbst and the lip bumpers made my mouth look like it had been stuffed. The fact that they were hot pink made it so much worse as they were super noticeable. My tongue was so uncomfortable with the expanders and my jaw looked so awkward. I did not want to spend another second looking at myself in the mirror and I wanted her to take all of this out of my mouth.
“Caaa we jus do normal brathes?” I asked barely understandable.
“You’re a very complicated case, so unfortunately no. I want to make sure you have the most thorough treatment possible. Don’t worry you’ll learn to love it!”
My tears threatened to spill over as I struggled to swallow.
“I caaan barely talk, you haf to take thomething out,” I lisped.
“I know your speech sounds bad right now, and unfortunately expanders just give you a lisp, but people will get used to you talking like that and soon you’ll forget you ever were able to talk without a lisp.”
“I’m alwayth going to thound like thith,” I cried.
“It might get a little better especially when I switch out appliances,” she said which gave me a little bit of hope. “I bet you’re starving though so let’s get some lunch, and we can just go over proper care when we get back to the house!”
The absolute last thing I wanted to do was go out in public looking like this, but I also thought that saying no could piss her off enough to add something new to my already full mouth, so I just nodded and prepared myself to face the public.
