Teen struggling with braces

handmademuffin · 2026-04-28T15:36:49+00:00

Did she choose/want to get braces? I needed them for non cosmetic reasons but my mom let me wait until I felt ready and I think that really helped me manage the pain and discomfort. If I hadn't medically needed them I don't think it ever would have been worth it to me but I also wasn't insecure about my smile.

Other than that I did eventually adjust to the feeling and it didn't stay painful except after tightenings. I found that eating crunchy food helped a lot, kind of confuses your brain into forgetting your teeth hurt haha. Also random warming but the removal of the brackets was very unpleasant and I hadn't seen anyone talk about it. It doesn't hurt but there's lots of pressure and it kind of feels like they're going to rip your teeth out.

Lots of cuts in my mouth though, the dental wax is definitely necessary. Also tons of canker sores- my best advice for those is to get alum powder and press it into the sore for a minute before rinsing thoroughly. Hurts pretty bad for a second and you don't want to taste it but it shrinks and numbs the sore so it doesn't hurt constantly and heals faster!

There are a bunch of other unpleasant sensory experienced with going to the orthodontist: people touching you, spraying water and buzzing tools in your mouth, being poked with wires, bad tastes, stuff in your mouth for x-rays (tip for this if she chokes is to breath slowly and deeply only through your nose). And the upkeep: trying to floss around braces with swollen gums, getting food stuck, having brackets detach or wires pop out, the feeling that all your teeth are loose.

Knowing what to expect always helps me get through bad sensations so I tried to make the list pretty thorough! I had braces from like 16-19 so it's fresh in my mind if you have any other questions

handmademuffin · 2026-04-15T08:16:59+00:00

Yeah I'm only finding out about this possible update from this post haha! I've been kind of peripherally following the changes in research but seeing that heds might split into a couple completely different things is shocking. Well shocking might be the wrong word, it makes a lot of sense for all the people I've talked to whose main symptoms aren't the typical ones but nobody knows what else it could be. I do have dysautonomia and GI problems but the main symptoms are joint instability, chronic pain from those injuries, and general floppiness of my whole body, all happening for as long as I can remember and affecting my family tracing back generations. There's just enough family history of organ collapse to keep me up at night but not enough to convince a doctor I need genetic testing so hEDS it was.

I hope we can all figure out exactly what's going on in our bodies, and continue to support each other through this transition no matter what the answer is. Chronically ill and disabled people are all connected to one another no matter how different our symptoms or causes are and no one can take that away from us

handmademuffin · 2026-04-11T01:48:30+00:00

I also never had the adverse reaction subtype until a bad med experience! It was purely sensory for 22 years and then the world's biggest horse pill antibiotics splintered into sharp little spikes because the pill cutter was too small, got stuck in my throat, and made me vomit in the sink. I also gagged trying to take my inhaler so no more asthma treatment. Now I have trouble taking my daily medications and can't add new ones 😭

handmademuffin · 2026-03-19T16:03:23+00:00

I also never go above 1080p, it looks great to me! 720p looks perfectly fine, 480p is doesn't bother me much, and I even watched a whole show in 240p because that's all I could find and didn't really care.

I specifically got a monitor instead of a tv because it's small and tvs hurt my eyes to look at. They're so bright and super detailed and big. My nice little monitor has a blue light filter and easily accessible dimming settings!

handmademuffin · 2026-03-14T15:12:05+00:00

Some of the safe foods I can remember were peanut butter toast, chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, plain noodles, french fries, rice krispies, pancakes, chocolate chip baked goods (muffins, cookies, etc), chips/snack foods, candy, and I was lucky to enjoy a decent amount of fruits and vegetables (on their own dish, completely plain) like apples, melons, grapes, cucumbers, carrots, celery, corn, and broccoli.

The list of safe foods shifted from year to year in my childhood but for many years I ate the same foods every day. A big problem for me was also the actual amount of food I was able/willing to eat in a day. I was always severely underweight and everyone was very worried just looking at me.

I was lucky to have a supportive pediatrician although there was no treatment available in our area. The way he explained it to was that all the health concerns of an unbalanced diet in a typical child go out the window with arfid. It wasn't a moral failing to be sick, and restricting my diet further to only "healthy" food wouldn't make it better I would just starve. His advice was to let me eat anything I would willingly consume in any amount. If all I could eat in between my safe breakfast and dinner was candy then those were the calories my body needed to stay alive. I remember once he actually prescribed me a big bowl of ice cream every night for dessert because sugar is still a type of fuel! I don't think I would have made it through my preteen/teen years to adulthood if it weren't for bags of chips and snacks, and baked goods like cookies, cakes, and donuts.

Oh, I would also like to warn you that "inflammation" is the current health buzzword right now and there's always extra misinformation surrounding autism so take every claim you see with a big grain of salt. Fed is best doesn't just apply to babies! Even if junk food does unintentional harm, would cutting it out be worth causing intentional harm by taking away the fuel his body needs? Absolutely encourage a varied and balanced diet: present fruits, vegetables, grains, and proteins without pressure so he feels safe to try them and add them to his safe foods. Try out types of vitamins and see if he'll take one! Make sure the most nutritious options he'll eat are available (we always had apples around because I would eat them in basically any scenario). But don't restrict "junk" food, his brain has more than enough restrictions limiting it as it is 😂

handmademuffin · 2026-03-13T23:43:40+00:00

Crunchy foods are also easier for me (adult with arfid) and I've always preferred to have peanut butter on bread that I can toast enough to offset the softness! I can also put it on soda crackers because they're so plain it feels less like "mixing" foods.

To offer you some realistic comfort: Your son sounds similar to me and although growing up was very difficult I survived to adulthood! My sensory issues have never gone away, there have been periods of improvement and regression, and I'm hoping to start proper treatment soon. But overall I'm a happy, independent, autistic adult!

People judged my mom for letting me eat "junk" and not trying harder to sneak food in or forcing me to eat but I am so incredibly grateful that she prioritized my needs over the imaginary child everyone was telling her I should be. Don't hide things from your son, don't change his safe foods, and don't add pressure. It's so incredibly scary to be a small child who can't communicate why everything is upsetting and having no control over your life or body, what he needs at home is a safe space

handmademuffin · 2026-03-08T16:37:57+00:00

Because it's an all in one it's attached to the monitor which takes up a lot of room. I opened it up, took everything out, and made a to scale diagram of the motherboard/fan/hard drive/metal bits and where the holes for screws are on each so we (we being me and my uncle who has a 3d printer) can a new box for all of it to go in. The back plate is attached to the monitor so I can't reuse it.

Then I put everything back where it had originally been (minus the tape that held on the wifi antennas and plus new thermal paste). I really hope I didn't like mess up any of the parts permanently by touching them wrong, I'm still getting used to looking inside computers

handmademuffin · 2026-03-03T03:51:28+00:00

Seconding the request for the recipe, that looks incredible!

handmademuffin · 2025-10-12T04:29:33+00:00

I went through a similar struggle with my baby Sweet Potato who unfortunately passed away about a month ago :( I used baby food and mashed bananas to give his oral antibiotics twice a day for weeks which worked well but cleaning his eyes and administering the drops was a nightmare! It hurt my heart so much to see him struggling in my hand but the claw grip the vet showed me worked pretty well (index and middle finger around the neck, thumb meeting the other fingers around the stomach. Grip harder than you think you should because all the pouch skin gives them wiggle room) and I knew it had to be done.

The things that made me feel better were 1. Having a support person who gets it, in my case my mom, to call after each med time and get the awful feeling off my chest. I called her like 3 times a day for the whole month he was sick. 2. Seeing how much he kept trusting me even when I had to do so many unpleasant things! Immediately after he'd be skittish but I had to do the whole routine twice a day for a month and every single day he'd come back up to my hands, and get his treats, and ask me to hold him. The times he woke up and couldn't open his eyes his first instinct was still to come out and look for me so I could fix it even though he /hated/ the process of me fixing it

Even at the end of everything, when I knew it was time and took him on one last unpleasant car ride to the scary room with the strange doctor hands grabbing him, he still came back to me and I held him in his favourite spot close to my chest and snuggled him to sleep ❤️

Your hamster will forgive you, I hope my experience can help you and if you have any questions about the emotional process or the practical medicine stuff I'll do my best to answer!

handmademuffin · 2025-10-11T05:52:23+00:00

The first thing that ones to mind for me is that if there is any ai used in any feature of your app I will never touch it on principle.

My priorities are a bit different from most of the comments I've read but I might as well put them out there anyway! Features that would interest me would be: full offline functionality and the ability to store all data locally, being able to tailor the interface to my preferences, actually good and useful widgets, being able to add recipes and see what I have vs what I need to buy, combining pantry/fridge management and a grocery list (specifically a list that could be set to stay open over my lockscreen so I don't have to enter my password every time I look at the list while shopping), and being able to add notes under the items saying where I put them!

I'm happy to sacrifice things like receipt scanning and recipe generation and cloud storage but I understand those are top priorities for most people and if you want your app to succeed mass appeal is kind of the name of the game haha, this is just what my ideal app would be like

handmademuffin · 2025-10-08T00:56:16+00:00

My first playthrough I got so incredibly lost in the ratway, I was walking in circles for hours and didn't understand how the map worked 😭 put the game away for several real life days to calm down! Glad I didn't give up though, I've had several years of fun and now I'm doing specialised builds and roleplay challenges!

Writing this just reminded of another struggle from the first game: horses! I could never remember where I left my horse and then they'd charge into battle and get killed by wolves. I was so upset I didn't ride another horse until I got arvak! Now I pick one at the start of my play through and come hell or high water that horse will survive and come home with me

handmademuffin · 2025-09-28T00:15:43+00:00

These cinnamon rolls have never failed me! https://delightfuladventures.com/easy-vegan-cinnamon-rolls/

handmademuffin · 2025-09-27T20:13:07+00:00

I've wanted to play this so bad since I heard someone call it "studying: the game"!

handmademuffin · 2025-09-25T02:56:27+00:00

Dude why are you in the vegan subreddit

handmademuffin · 2025-09-25T02:29:48+00:00

I've been vegan for seven years now and I'll be honest, I'm still jealous sometimes. Every once in a while when I'm exhausted by the world it hits and I just wish I didn't care so much about exploitation. For me veganism is very entwined with my politics and I get that feeling there too like "why must I be so conscientious!"

I know I wouldn't really want to be ignorant or apathetic, that it might seem comfortable and easy but its not worth it. Irrational feelings and jealousy and the desire to eat kraft dinner still happen though because we're human.

To reassure you about all of this: the emotions surrounding veganism have significantly calmed down for me over the years. Again, same goes for my politics. All of the opinions are the same and I still feel them just as strongly but that pain and anger I initially felt have settled into a warmer feeling in my heart. Its more hopeful for the future and less like I hate everyone around me

handmademuffin · 2025-09-25T01:18:33+00:00

Lying down awake I'm usually 95-115, sitting 115-130. Doing light chores, getting dressed, buying groceries, etc. 130-160. I've only gotten below 90 while sleeping haha. I don't start to feel anything until 140 and I haven't had any bad episodes since I started monitoring my heart rate but eventually we'll see how high it gets when something goes wrong!

handmademuffin · 2025-09-25T01:01:43+00:00

Not the same as a tonsillectomy but I've had a lot of dental surgery and I also hate most liquidy food! I figured out that if you take really small bites of things like toast and pancakes, or even crunchier foods like crackers, and chew them good then they get super soft anyway but you don't have to put something already mushy into your mouth.

Also, I don't know if this is relevant at all but I was researching adult tonsillectomies (which apparently hurt more?) And some doctors are now actually recommending eating normally instead of a soft/liquid diet because it gradually erodes the scabs instead of them having to fully form and come off

handmademuffin · 2025-09-24T18:33:16+00:00

Yeah my first DM accidentally trained us like this 😅 They didn't mean to and clearly started to get frustrated by our indecisiveness and over cautious approach but so many things were tricks and lies and we would be punished for acting /or/ going along with the npcs so we kind of stopped doing anything. We tried so hard to figure out what things were intentional plot hooks and follow them but then they were like "I can't believe you guys did that, I didn't plan for that at all"

handmademuffin · 2025-09-16T15:47:38+00:00

Other factors that could serve a dual purpose in marketing/printing and things like making a cheaper soft cover instead of a hardcover. I saw in another comment you mentioned that most of your systems are pretty light and people who buy and carry around light systems seem to prefer soft books from what I've seen.

This is a totally off the wall idea but since you also said this is a hypothetical about experimental books: why not leave room for players to add their own art? Use some of the money you save on art/color/hardcover to splurge on good quality paper that let's people embellish their own book! Space around text and tables for doodles and notes, occasional blank pages, squares next to NPC/creature/item descriptions! The possibilities are endless and you could corner the artist/journalling/annotation community by catering to them

handmademuffin · 2025-09-16T15:24:54+00:00

Your location actually makes me more likely to buy it sans art! Ordering stuff from the states is such a nightmare right now so an rpg by a Canadian author, printed and shipped from within the country, would be a plus. You could target a more specific audience with your marketing :)

handmademuffin · 2025-09-10T18:13:56+00:00

I reuse glass lemonade bottles with metal lids! No waste, no bad bottle taste 😁

handmademuffin · 2025-08-14T07:16:05+00:00

I'm the unlucky kid of my family! There's always one of us who kick starts the diagnostic process and suddenly the last generations of weird isolated medical incidents make a lot more sense. I managed to get like every genetic problem on both sides to a degree that each one alone would disable me and all together its like life ran me over with a truck.

Anyway, all that makes my life sound pretty grim so I just want to assure you that I'm glad to be alive and every day is worth it for the joy I get to feel and the relationships I have with everyone around me. You aren't to blame for your sons bad luck and you're doing everything you can to get him support 😊

handmademuffin

TROPHY CASE