Brave Boy

About 2 years ago, Ethan turned up with a tiny cavity in one of his teeth. It was one of the few times in my life that I seriously question my own sanity. I really thought I was losing my mind!

One night after I had brushed E's teeth, and for once had bribed him into letting me floss them as well, I spied an tiny bit of silver in one of his teeth. A cavity filling? He'd never been to the dentist! When, and how, had he gone to the dentist and gotten a cavity filled? The only thing I could figure out was that Otis must have taken him, because I certainly knew I hadn't taken him. But that was insane! Why would Otis take him to his first dentist appointment and not tell me?

I asked Otis about it, and of course, he says "When, and more importantly, why, would I have taken him to the dentist? I don't even know where the dentist is! You had to have taken him, and it's just slipped your mind." Impossible!!! I have a notoriously bad memory, yes, but how could I forget my child's first dentist visit? And a 2-year-old getting a cavity filled? Was it so traumatic that I'd somehow blocked it from my memory? What was going on? Other than daycare, Ethan hadn't been around any other adults. Was this some kind of weird, new service at the daycare? I.totally.freaked.out. I really thought I was going crazy. How my baby had gotten to the dentist and gotten that cavity filled. It was like some kind of Twilight Zone episode!

I agonized for days, wracking my brain trying to come up with any kind of answer, and then suddenly, it came to me. One day a few weeks earlier, E was poking around in our bedroom and had found his papi's stash of chewing gum, the kind in the silver, foil wrapper. Being a typical not-quite-2-year-old, unwrapping the gum surely seemed like a complete waste of time, so he proceeded to chew, and swallow, entire pieces of gum, wrapper and all. I caught him on his 3rd piece. Apparently a bit of wrapper had gotten wedge into a teeny, tiny cavity in E's tooth! I took him to the dentist a few days later, and even the dentist was fooled! She thought it was a filling too!

Anyhoo, sometime in the last few months, the filling fell out, and the cavity got really huge. We took him into the dentist and it was decided he'd need a crown on that tooth in order to save it. For some reason, the enamel on that one tooth is really thin, and it couldn't have handled another, bigger filling.

So, today was the day. Ethan was very excited about getting a "transformer" tooth, but the excitement quickly wore off after the first shot in his gums. They attempted to give him nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to help him relax, but it's administered nasally, and he had a stuffy nose, so he wasn't getting a steady dose and it really didn't help much.

He was pretty squirmy, and cried out a few times, but he did really well. Far better than I would have done, there's nothing in this world I hate more than the dentist! The whole procedure only took about 45 min, and Ethan left happily with a SpongeBob sticker and toy car from the treasure chest.

Unfortunately, because his mouth was so numb, he kept chewing on his lower lip. Now it's all swollen and huge, and it looks horrible, but it doesn't seem to hurt. Tomorrow his class is going strawberry picking, so I hope the swelling goes down tonight.

>

>

>