Dental DilemmasToday was our morning at the Dentist. We were all up, dressed, groomed and out the door by 8 a.m. I was even armed with my camera. ::snort:: I didn’t get Josiah’s photo before he was done and on his way to classes and work.
We really like this dentist. He’s older. He’s “common sense”. He LOVES children and I’ve never seen an office that is as patient and gentle with children.
They even keep toys in the hygienist’s room so that kids can watch and play while others are being worked on.
Zander has some sensory issues. His differences really manifest at the dentist. I have SO appreciated how well Miss Gina works with him. We have NEVER been able to get him into the dentist chair. After three tries, she had him in the chair and we cheered.
Today, he walked in (4th visit) and said he wanted to be first. He hopped right up there.
He’s been saying he has a “sharp tooth”. He often talks about dinosaurs (ok – 90% of the time) and I assumed he was pretending he was a t-rex. He let Miss Gina LOOK at his teeth today
– and we discovered that he has a tooth that is so bad that ½ of it has fallen away. They have no idea why he’s not been complaining of pain. The thing is NOW we have to figure out what to do. They can’t do it at their office. They’ve suggested two options. One the dentist doesn’t like because he thinks the pediatric dentist will traumatize him with the “get em in and get em out – time is money” attitude of the office. The other will lead to future orthodontic work. Ugh – either option may well set us way back again at getting him to open his mouth at the dentist.
Random Shots
After this shot - I warned a certain 13 year old that *I* had hiney shots of him as a baby and if he didn't want to see them on the blog tonight - he'd best put the camera UP.
When the dentist came in he said he wouldn’t show his tooth to him, “Only to Miss Gina”. We usually go out to Dairy Queen to celebrate our clean teeth. I told him that we’d let him choose where we went if he’d let the dentist look. He did.
We went to “the Game” – Mr. Gattis.
"Jare - come ride my car"
This girl loves horses and this is "my horse"
Let's see...then we did the HoF run. I cooked dinner. I got a work out in - I've been mixing that up a bit more in an effort to see results.
14 comments:
UGH.... hopefully you'll be able to figure out which will cause the least amount of problems.
Sorry to hear about the difficulties figuring out how to best help Xander. Matthew, our 6 yr old, has sensory issues too. He has an incredibly high tolerance for pain so I'm wondering if that's why Xander wasn't telling you he was hurting?
Please pray for us! Matthew's first visit to the dentist is Friday (tomorrow) a.m.
Way to go, Zander! Those little victories are so wonderful.
I hope you can come up with a good solution to his tooth issue. For what it is worth, we have a wonderful ped dentist in our area. They are really great with the kids.
Our ped dentist is also very good. We never feel rushed. I am assuming that your dentist is going on actual knowledge of the other dentist, but would want to know for sure. That is a hard choice. Glad you at least were able to find out about his tooth!
It has been an interesting road in dental care with our crew. One with sensory issues, one with a bad gag reflex and one that had a crown at 2 years of age (she spent many a visit in the "screamer room" after that!) They all do pretty good now, but we still have to warn them to go easy with Jess and that moving chair.
Sis:
Don't they have NICE ways to put a scared child to sleep or at least not aware of or even able to remember what happened?
If I had a child due for something big that is a hurt issue I'd let them sleep away.
l/p
Mom t
....Don't they have NICE ways to put a scared child to sleep or at least not aware of or even able to remember what happened?....
I was thinking the same thing. When I got my wisdom teeth pulled in early college, I had gas prior to the IV drug. WHen I woke up, the IV was already gone and I'd been totally unaware of having four teeth pulled.
Evidently they will not put him completely out wherever we take him - unless we go to the hospital.
The Oral Surgeon would do the IV and that would make him not care.
The peds use laughing gas and he'd still be aware and have to cooperate from what I understand. Yes, that was our dentists opinion of THIS pediatric dentristry clinic - but I'm calling today to see if we can get in and observe, talk and see.
Michelle - praying for you and Matthew today. The pain threshold may be connected to the sensory issue? Never thought of that.
Mom and Renee - in Blgs YEARS ago when Jamin was in this same boat because he also had a THING and wouldn't let anyone touch him and the mouth thing was big with him too - back then we didn't realize there was a name for this. LOL Anyway - they gave him something to take before we went into the dentist......
Sierra had two teeth pulled by our pediatric dentist a few years ago due to an infection . .they put spacers in and they will remain until the new teeth start coming in.
Also, good job at getting a workout in. I just can't get motivated plus I had a headache yesterday and wokeup with a slight one today. I wish I could wakeup at 5:30 and just head to the gym and get it over with.
My sister, whose dh is in the military, has had to put her dd to sleep for every dentist visit she's ever had. She had many issues with her teeth and was a big fighter.LOL They can do it and I would find a place where they will do it, even if it's at the hospital.
De'Etta,
In the "Out-of-Sync Child it mentions the pain factor under the hyposensitivity checklist. Matthew has a VERY high tolerance for pain so we tend to be hypervigilant when he gets hurt/sick because he can't feel the pain until it gets to a critical level. There is a similar checklist here: http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/sensory-processing-disorder-checklist.html
Praying Zander can get his teeth cared for with a minimum amount of distress for him. Its never easy with the littles, even without the other issues!
Susan
Still praying for the best solution for Zander.
Too funny that one of the kids turned the camera on you in the dentists chair!
On the pain thresh hold I have read that if the SID is Hyper sensative (doesn't like touch, stays away from people, doesn't want to be hugged of play near others) they may be over sensative to pain and feel it more. If the SID is Hypo (which someone already mentioned, they like hard touch, like crash and bang type playing and rough and tumble, can be too in your face with other kids) they may feel pain less than others.
They do feel it differently though, which is why I didn't know for sure if Trevor even needed a doctor when he broke his leg. When he was young he had x-rays because he wouldn't walk on his foot, crawled, but we hadn't seen an injury occur and I was always with him. The doctor found nothing wrong but Trevor crawled or wanted to be carried or in a stroller for about a month! He was 4 or 5 I think or maybe 3, LOL my mind is gone. So I didn't know if he was over reacting when he got hurt this time. It's tricky.
Did you find a copy of out of sync child yet? That was my... want to say bible but that would be disresectful, you know what I mean, it was the best book I read when Trevor was younger and I reffered to it again and again.
It's the bst book I know of on this siubject.
Jodi - got the book from PBS and it's on my nighstand...though hasn't been read yet. Guess I better hop to it. LOL
Yep, Grace has an extremely high pain threashold and rarely complains. If she does, I KNOW it's bad.
At the same time though, she is the one who feels a gentle stroke of the head as discomfort. SID kids are a mystery...
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