Valentine's Day 2011, part two

Warning: Contains really icky tooth pictures! If you're squeamish, don't scroll down!  Don't say I didn't warn you!

Preston was in and out of the dentist's office in just over an hour.  I couldn't believe it.  I thought it would take much longer!  Apparently he was great... very brave and cooperative.  They had to extract a back top tooth, put in a spacer and do a filling on the back bottom tooth.  And even though the 'happy gas' and whatnot from the visit has long worn off, he's still not acting like it bothers him one bit.  What a trooper!   

He brought home the tooth they extracted in a cute little "Lucky Tooth" ring.  Pretty bizarre, especially when I got a look at the tooth they yanked.  Ready for this?

It looks GINORMOUS!

And then, THIS is why it had to be removed!

Gahhh, I know... disgusting!!!

Seriously, what the heck?  Part of his tooth broke off at some point, and the insides, nerves and whatnot where just... there.  We never knew it was like that until last week, and before that he only complained a few times about his tooth hurting... like literally he maybe mentioned it three times.  And he mentioned it just a few days after Michael had his teeth worked on, so honestly I thought he was just saying it to be like Daddy.  The dentist the first visit said he couldn't believe that Preston wasn't in a lot more pain.  Me too, seeing this!  Geez!

So, they pulled that tooth and had to put in a spacer so that the other teeth around it wouldn't grow into it's place before the real adult tooth descended into it's proper spot.  We made the spacer thing sound really exciting to Preston so that he wouldn't be freaked out at having metal in his mouth.  We told him he got to be part-Robot now... THAT made it just fine by him!  Haha.  I tried to take a picture inside his mouth so HE could see what it looks like in there...

Yeah, it's not pretty.

The metal part you can really see is what's keeping it in there... it's wrapped around the tooth next to the empty space.  It'll fall out when that baby tooth falls out, which probably won't be for a few more years.  

I wish that was it for dental work for a while, but sadly... he has to have a filling or two more and a crown put on a few teeth on the other side of his mouth.  But those should be a breeze compared to this, and since he did so great with this... no problem!

He came right home and had spaghetti dinner, then icecream and has been jumping around, acting fine.  Nothing slows him down!  He did feel like he needed to 'rest' for a few minutes to help his mouth heal.  Hehe.

Taking a break.

My mom got back from her trip to Chicago this evening, so on their way home from the airport they stopped by for a quick visit, and brought the boys more Valentine's gifts.  They got a cute stuffed kitty and doggy, Chicago t-shirts and cards.  So, despite a dentist visit, I'd say they had a nice Valentine's Day after all!

x

P.S. We had a rough nite!  Just after Preston's shower, around 9pm, the wound started bleeding.  A lot.  It continued on and on throughout the nite.  We tried to keep him up, keep pressure on it, rinse it out... the blood just kept coming.  When it would slow down, we'd let him sleep, but then we'd check on him and find a big pool of blood on his pillow, then stat over.  He wasn't in any pain, thank the Lord, but there was just a lot of blood coming from the wound.  We tried all kinds of things throughout the nite to help him, but all he wanted was for us to leave him alone so he could sleep, poor thing.  Finally, this morning we got in first thing to see the dentist again.  He said it was good that we brought him back in so he could look at it, clean it up better and see how it's healing.  The spacer goes down into the place where the tooth used to be, so if Preston bites down just a little bit 'off', it can re-injure the wound.  That's why it just kept bleeding, plus the tooth had signs of infection and the gums still had some too I guess.  There were just a bunch of different things causing it.  But, it looks much better now, no more bleeding since this morning... and, of course, Preston is still feeling fine... you seriously can't slow the boy down!  Michael and I were pretty worried and up most of the nite, I hate not knowing what to do for my child.  I'm thankful for a great pediatric dentist, though, 'cause he made me feel 100x better, and assured me that what we were doing was right and that everything is gonna be fine.  Whew.  We're still watching it, 'cause that spacer post might be more trouble in the future.