As most of you know, Sawyer has been on what seems like a never ending journey towards healthy teeth. We had been letting him brush them himself (big mistake!) and apparently he's only been doing the fronts of them....so he had gone to a family dentist, freaked out, got kicked out (oh sorry! I mean, 'encouraged to go else where.') then ended up at the Pediatric Dental Clinic at Children's Hospital.
He has a few cavitis that have really been bothering him and that need to be taken care of right away or else we run the risk of having to do a root canal! He's four! So, that's how he and I ended up at Children's Hospital this morning, bright and early! If you haven't been inside Children's yet, let me tell ya, it's GORGEOUS! It's a brand new facility that is so well designed to be comforting and educational. We were the first appointment of the day, so we sat in the lobby area and looked at the aquariums, played on the activity walls, and watched a bit of, "The Fox and the Hound".
We were then introduced to Dr. Cox, his nursing assistant, and the anesthesiologist. Now, I didn't go to Sawyer's previous dental visit with the family dentist, but from what Bill told me, they weren't quite as kid-friendly as we had expected. So coming into this environment at Children's Hospital was just a night and day difference! Dr. Cox and his staff were just so excited and attentive to all of Sawyer's questions, and boy were there a lot! They explained what every single tool, machine and bottle in the room was. They encouraged him to climb up on the chair and use the controls to make it go up and down, test the lights and touch the tools. Dr. Cox was explaining what each instrument was, and when he got to the water sprayer, Sawyer started to look a bit nervous....so Dr. Cox suggested that HE would lay down in the chair and pretend to be the patient and Sawyer would be the dentist and he let Sawyer spray a bunch of water in his mouth! Now that's what I call good 'bed side' manner!
They continued to 'check his muscles' (take his blood pressure), listen to his breathing and then gave him a little cocktail of calming 'juice'. It was funny because for the past few weeks, Sawyer has asked, "Does this have sugar in it?" with just about everything he puts in his mouth. So, when they were mixing up his meds with sugary TANG, he of course asked what it was. Then he goes, "Oh no, I'm not allowed to have any sugar because it's bad for my teeth. My dentist told me so!" :) Dr. Cox proceeded to tell him that HE was his dentist and this was a very special treat today. They dimmed the lights, let Sawyer pick out a movie and we just sat and relaxed while waiting for the juice to kick in. He started to get a little bit loopy...just enough to make me chuckle :)
When they were ready to begin, I left the room and they went to work. Now, we were informed at the beginning that this procedure with the 'jiuce' and the laughing gas is normally 95% successful.....would it surprise you to hear that Sawyer is part of the 5% that wasn't?
Yup, that's right folks, they gave him as much sedation as they could without putting him under and he was still jabbering away, completely alert and ready to go. When considering how long he would have to have his mouth open for (about an hour and a half), Dr. Cox felt like it was going to be too much for him. So, we agreed that it was in his best interest to come back in a couple weeks for an OR visit and get everything done in one fell swoop. We'll do X rays, tend to the cavities and do a cleaning all at once. We want to get this whole thing taken care of ASAP, but at the same time we don't want to have a traumatizing experience and shoot ourselves in the foot for future dental appointments.
We feel really confident and comfortable with Dr. Cox and his staff. While we were chatting, his nurses of course thought Sawyer was the cutest thing they had ever seen and gave him a tour of the dental floor and he came back loaded up with all sorts of bouncy balls, rubber frogs and blown up glove balloons with faces on them!
Keep Sawyer in your prayers (his parents too!) as he makes his first trip to the OR in a few weeks! Yikes!
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