Conner at the Dentist

The Dreaded Dentist.

Oh man. What a hard week. Our sweet little boy had to get a mini root-canal, two crowns, and a filling. He has a deficiency in enamel apparently called hypoplasia, basically I gather that it means his enamel isn't as strong as it should be so his teeth are more susceptible to cavities. And yes, we do brush his teeth every single night. The doctor told me you can brush their teeth three times a day but if they have soft enamel they are pretty likely to need some work done.
He actually started complaining to us a few weeks ago of his teeth hurting and our friend Steph D. who is a dental hygienist looked at his back tooth and said it definitely had a cavity and we needed to go to a pediatric dentist. We then found out about his "situation," and had to schedule the work to be done. Originally we were going to have him put out because we could not fathom him sitting still for any kind of procedure let alone one that included injections and drilling, but Corey did some checking around and found out they can sometimes give kids a "kiddi cocktail" that they drink before the appointment so they are more sedated and can have the nitrous while the work is being done. I will be honest, Corey and I were VERY skeptical but doing it this way was going to save us $500 bucks so we went for it. Much to Corey's and my shock he did MAGNIFICENTLY. We had to wake him up at seven in the morning to get him to drink his nasty green Demerol cocktail which the poor thing looked at us very willingly and drank the first sip and then looked like he might die from the disgust and said, "NO, NEVER!" when we tried to get him to drink more. Unfortunately we had to hold him down and shove it down his throat, it really must have been awful tasting stuff.
We didn't notice it taking much effect so again we were skeptical about how this was all going to go down but we took him to the doctor and they laid him down and put the bubble gum nitrous mask on him and after a few breaths he seemed pretty relaxed. Even more to our shock was the dentist actually gave him several injections in his mouth and Conner didn't even flinch. Corey and I just kept looking at each other like, "Is this for real?"
So after the work was complete Conner got to pick a prize from the dentist office and then Corey and I had promised a reward from us if he went thru all this so we took him to Toys R Us and he picked out a Cars toy.
I thought we had been over the worst (and it went so smoothly!) Boy was I wrong. The hard part came later when all the numbness wore off.
He was a wreck. I gave him Motrin and Tylenol and it did NOTHING. He was so upset that he was hitting his cheek saying "Get it out, get it out." And then when he started crying and kicking the walls, this freaked me out so bad that I called the doctor and asked if there were something else I could give him for the pain. They were not at all surprised and called us in some Tylenol with Codeine at the pharmacy so I rushed right over to get it. It made a very dramatic improvement so I am so glad I ended up calling. He was miserable for about four days and we had to keep him on a strict dose of the pain medicine or he would freak out the minute it wore off. It is now Sunday, six days later and today was the first time he made it thru the day without needing the pain med. He acted pretty sensitive and irritable today but he was not complaining of his teeth specifically so we are looking at it as a sign of big improvement.
I know all kids go to the dentist and most have a cavity or two when they are kids, but this experience was really hard on me. I finally had a total melt down the night after his procedure, it was so difficult for me to watch him in such discomfort and be able to do nothing. He kept asking me to take it out and I could do nothing for him other than give him the pain medicine and try to distract him.
Anyway hopefully we are on our way out of this and we can avoid this kind of thing for a -long-while. We are obviously being extra thorough on teeth brushing from now on, but it's kinda annoying because we really always have made it a habit to brush his teeth every night. Owell, we can only do what we can do right?

Corey tried to convince him this was his "space mask" and he could breath bubble gum out of it.