Outside of the "Mouthbox": Catherine's Story

The impetus for writing this article stems from a long talk I recently had with a trained Orofacial Myologist about her traumatic childhood experience involving fixed oral habit appliances. Her story was painful to listen to but not as painful as what she had to live through… 

Imagine that you have been a committedly intense thumb sucker all day and all night long, starting from birth. It comforts and soothes you like nothing else. Because they care, your parents repeatedly discourage you verbally and have started applying a vile tasting polish to deter the habit. If any wet polish remains on your nails, it burns your eyes when you wipe them. By trial and error, you figure out by sucking it all off when first applied, you can resume your sucking without care. As years pass, you develop an anterior open bite. Since you suck your thumb at school or wherever you are, not surprisingly, you are considered “different” and you are a loner with no friends. At the age of seven, not knowing what else to do, your parents take you to a local orthodontist for help. His “help” is cementing an oral habit appliance (a crib/cage, rake/spurs or other) into your palate with the goal of ‘stopping the dreaded habit’. You have no say in the matter, but you emotionally and vehemently reject allowing it to “help”. You continue to thumb suck over and around it, causing pain and blistering of your thumb. Over the next three years, you endure three other types of fixed appliances with the last one being modified two times within a week! Your teeth have become very sensitive and your tongue blistered by trying to help maneuver soft foods, which is all you can eat at this point. You have had enough! By using chewing gum and one of your mom’s expensive dinner forks, you pry the device out of your mouth. Now you can suck your thumb whenever you want to but can pop the device back in when others are around! You told your parents that if they tried to have anything put back in, you would destroy fork after fork to remove it! 

This was Catherine’s story. I’m sure you felt her lack of control over herself as well as her physical and emotional pain. As an adult, she has TMD issues, which she believes were caused by years of habit appliances and four years of braces. She has a fear of dentistry, as well. She confided to me that if someone had been there to talk with her about her habit and given her information in an honest, caring way, she probably would have jumped at the chance to stop! And she was sure that her parents would have definitely moved in that direction had they known of such a program. 

As Orofacial Myologists, we are called to change the approach from “doing to”(habit appliances) and instead “drawing from” (habit control therapy) our patients/clients. If we can help others from having to go through this, even if the circumstances are less traumatic, we have changed a life for the better. As Catherine said to me when I asked her to share her story, “Thank you for doing this. I am very grateful you are speaking up for these kids.” Let’s be sure we all speak up for these kids!! 

Till next time, Becky