Ben had his 6mth dental appointment yesterday.
For the most part, Ben has always had great dentist appointments. He has no cavities. He has had some plague buildup at a checkup here or there over the years, but nothing that has happened consistently. The message I usually leave with at these appointments is that things look great, and we should continue with whatever we are doing.
But yesterday, Ben's teeth presented very differently. Ben had lots of plague buildup. The dentist also indicated that Ben has some bone loss in one area of his gums. This means the disease has progressed past the first stage (gingivitis).
The poor guy had to sit thru a 2 hour dental appointment. That's a lot of time poking and picking at his teeth, but Ben handled it like a champ! He wanted to have his hand held. So I held one hand, and his brother Jonah held his other hand to comfort him. It was very sweet.
Side note: I don't usually bring both boys to appointments. They can feed off each other and get a little obnoxious. Unknown to me, when I scheduled this appointment for Ben, I didn't realize there was no school for yesterday. So that is how I ended up having both goofballs at the dentist. To their credit, the boys did pretty good, especially considering we were there for 2 hours!
Now the plan for treating Ben's periodontal disease. Ben will need to have surgery under general anesthesia in order for the dentist to pull 3 baby teeth (blocking 2 adult teeth from coming down leading to a prime place for bacteria to gather) and to have scaling and planing (deep cleaning of the gum). Hopefully, this surgery will help rebuild the bone and tissue.
I'm guessing this would be too much for him to handle under local anesthesia which is why he will be put under.
So a few thoughts:
1. I'm very confused how Ben's teeth could have gotten this bad in the past 6 months. I confess we don't floss Ben's teeth, but we never have flossed, and as I mentioned earlier, he never had serious plague buildup. The dentist did explain this is probably the result of many factors besides just poor brushing: puberty, genetics, and Ben's hypothyroidism (can increase the risk of gum issues). So many pieces to this puzzle.
2. Since Ben came home to us in 2016, we have never had any big medical issue with him. Jonah has had 6 surgeries, but we have never had to go thru anything like this with Ben. Ben had his open heart surgery at 18 months when he was still in Lithuania. So that's comforting to know if he could handle major heart surgery, this dental surgery will probably not be a big deal for him. But it will just be weird to see Ben in this situation- it might be hard for him to be vulnerable, and I'm not sure if he will allow us to comfort him. He tends to get very independent when he is sick.
Now the funny part of this whole 2 hour adventure at the dentist. During the middle of all the scraping and picking on Ben's teeth, Jonah started talking about a loose tooth. I thought he was just making appropriate associations since we were indeed at the dentist. But then, Jonah was looking for something on the floor when he excitedly pointed to something: it was half a tooth. I looked inside his mouth, and sure enough, I could the the spot where something had just come loose.
Only Jonah would loose a tooth while waiting in the dentist office...that kid!
The dentist nicely checked things over for us (after Jonah got himself in a dental chair and put on a pair of dental sunglasses for the bright light). She wasn't worried that it was only half of a tooth- the other half had already come out, unknown to us.
I have a feeling between keeping the staff into their lunch hour, having to go thru the hoops of scheduling surgery for Dec 5th, and having Jonah as an "extra patient", that office was glad to see us go.
But truth is, I was glad to leave myself. Quite the adventure!
Click HERE for information about Periodontal Disease
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