Meagan's dental saga is done

Meagan's major dental problems are hopefully done for a great long while now. We took her to a pediatric dentist last month, who scheduled her fillings at Dayton Children's today. It was done at the hospital because they put her under anesthesia for the procedure. It was much easier on her than the last dentist, who bodily held her down and broke a tooth in the process.

I took her in a little after 10:00. She wasn't supposed to have anything to eat after eight o'clock the night before, so she fussed a bit when I didn't let her have any breakfast. I expected her to fight me more on that, but she was actually okay. When we got there, they took us back to a little waiting room, where she was checked in and had vitals taken, that sort of stuff. A nurse gave her a coloring book and some crayons. It was really cute, because she kept saying she was going to take the coloring book home to her sister.

The procedure was scheduled to start at 12:15, but the previous surgery in the room before her took longer than expected, so hers was late starting. When they were ready for her, they gave her some medicine to swallow. I don't remember what it was exactly, but it was supposed to help ease the separation from the parents and calm her down until the anesthesia was given. It made her a little silly. We were coloring together, and there were some letters on the page, and all of a sudden she started talking about "m's", and whacking her stomach, saying there were "m's" in her tummy. I asked her if she meant M&M's, but she said, "No, there are m's in my tummy," and burst out laughing. It was pretty funny.

While she was gone, I had a couple of hours to kill. I mostly sat and watched TV and knitted. It was rather relaxing. I didn't even feel guilty for just sitting around, like I would have, had I done it at home.

After the dentist was done, she came and talked to me. She showed me some x-rays they'd taken, a couple of which were of her cleft. She's missing a tooth there, and the x-ray doesn't show an adult tooth, either. Eventually we'll have to do something about that. The x-rays showed her adult teeth coming in in a few places--it was kind of weird to see. The dentist said she was kind of advanced in that respect, her bottom front teeth are already loose. They will tighted up and loosen over the next several months, but she expects those front teeth to fall out within six months to a year at most. That's kind of early. The dentist also found one extra cavity that we didn't know about--it was between two teeth, so really had had a total of five cavities. They put some sealant on several of the teeth to hopefully help prevent any more. We also floss her teeth daily now. Hopefully all that will help us to not have to do this again.

They did take longer to bring her back to me than I'd expected, though. The procedure was supposed to take about an hour, and then she was supposed to go to an observation room for an hour to wake up, and then they were supposed to bring her back to me, but it was longer than an hour after the dentist came in to talk to me. A nurse told me she was disoriented and started thrashing around as she started to wake up (which is pretty normal), so they gave her some pain medication and she fell asleep again. When I did see her again, she was still a bit groggy, and still had the IV in. It was all wrapped up so at first I thought she had a cast on for some weird reason. She really did NOT like the IV, and kept trying to take it off. I managed to distract her with the TV and other things until they were ready to take it out, but she was really glad to get it out. She kept saying that she wanted to go home. She told me she wanted some water, so they brought her a sippy cup with apple juice (water apparently makes kids throw up after anesthesia), but she hardly touched it, and still wasn't happy. As soon as we left the hospital, and started driving away, she drained the cup. I think she was more eager to get home than to drink before. Once she got home and ate some food, she was pretty much back to normal. I don't think she remembers much of anything, because when she's talked about it, all she's said is that she went to the hospital, and got a pink sippy cup and a coloring book for her sister (which she really tried to give to Bethany, but Bethany didn't want it). We're glad it all went so well, and that she's cavity-free now.