- This week, we progressed the slow running drama of my youngest’s toof.
- Avid readers of alicebartlett.co.uk/blog will recall when he got his first tooth (very early), and then the rest came in, and then when they started to fall out in a weird order about a year ago. Well, 6 months of waiting for the thing that pushed out that top tooth to emerge, it turned out it was a “supernumerary tooth” - ie one that isn’t supposed to be there, or anywhere in his mouth.
- This week he went down to the specialist NHS children’s dentist (where all the dentists have those jazzy hats on) to have it removed.
- The way they do this, is you get a nose mask that pushes NO2 into your nose, and you have to breathe only through your nose, with your mouth wide open so the dentist can get to work. For a laugh, why don’t you try opening your mouth as wide as possible and then breathing only through your nose. Not easy! Not easy for a five year old!
- My guy has been practicing this a lot over the last few weeks. I kept catching him trying it. He mostly kept telling me he couldn’t do it and would never be able to do it (although I could see he could sometimes do it).
- Once you’ve got some sweet sweet NO2 fuzzing your reality, they put some numbing cream on a spot in your mouth and then inject you with a local anaesthetic. Then they basically go at you with a pair of pliers.
- When I asked the dentist… do kids actually let you do this? She said it worked about 70% of the time, and the other 30% they had to reconvene at a later date to do the removal under general. But the wait time for that is 5 months longer. “I’ll take those odds!” I thought.
- So on Monday, equipped with the promise of a Shy Guy plushie and a day off school if he went through with it, my guy went down to the dentist with his dad. Both of them were very brave, I think Lachie was more anxious than Chaz. Chaz, apparently, just seemed very calm and focussed on the task at hand and determined to get this done. Not a single flap from him.
- The tooth they pulled out was mega. Strangle little stump then a huge long pointy root. The tooth fairy has it now, in her kingdom of teeth.
- The presence of this super numerary tooth has, according to the x-ray, messed up his adult teeth a bit so this is probably not the end of the special dentist trips.