Ricky's Silver Tooth

I hate the dentist.  Really I hate hygienists, but there is no love lost on the dentist either.  I blame most of my disgruntledness on the large number of cavities I had filled as a kid and a few horrible orthodontist experiences when I was nine.  Anyway, I try really hard not to pass my biases onto my boys.  I don’t want them to dread the dentist yet (I’d rather they learn that on their own).  So when they went in for a check up last month and we discovered Ricky had a cavity, I tried to make it a minor thing.

I was told he needed a cavity filled between two molars and possibly a second cavity filled once they got in there.  Sedation was going to be used (because this office does that).  I was okay with all of this because I figured he wouldn’t have any memory of drills and other icky dentist office stuff.  On our way to the dentist that morning, I explained that he had a cavity to be filled and it was similar to getting a sliver taken out of his finger.  Ricky was totally fine with it and not the least bit nervous.

When we checked in, I got a whole different story.  Apparently, if I had understood some of the abbreviations on the paperwork they had given me, I would have known that Ricky was actually getting a baby root canal and a crown done.  I was a bit disturbed, to say the least.   But, what do you do?  It is a tooth he’ll have until he’s 12-ish and the procedure will be less painful than the possible toothache he would get if we didn’t go ahead.  This did nothing to make me like dentists any better.

It was horrible for me.  Ricky was just fine.  The sedation kicked in and while they had told me to expect him to be sleepy and emotional, they did not tell me to hold on to him because he would slide off the chair and lose the ability to hold himself up!  Nor did they tell me that after the procedure, he would hallucinate and be immobile and … I don’t even like thinking about how sad he was.  The very kind nurse lady explained that the sedation is a lot like alcohol and it is hard to know what affect it will have on a patient.  I then, at 8 months pregnant, had to carry my 42 pound dead-weight son out to the car with him asking me why I had 2 heads between his crying spells.  Did I mention it was horrible?

But I didn’t want Ricky creating bad feelings or memories of the dentist just because of me, so once he returned to his normal self (1 or 2 hours later), we told him about his silver tooth.  We made it sound like something special and neat for him to have.  My crowns are all white, but I still have some old silver fillings, so I showed him those and how neat it was that he got a whole silver tooth and I only had parts that were silver.  It did the trick.  There are no hard feelings in Ricky about his silver tooth … it is his special tooth and he’ll happily show it off!

It isn’t in the most easy to photograph position …

And heaven forbid you take pictures of one child’s teeth and forget the other one …