So, the day has finally come that we need to take some dental action on J. We've been going back and forth with the Dental Clinic at the hospital about what we should do and when we should do it. It's been difficult attempting to move forward because the residents change every 18 months or so and each one has had a different opinion about what to do with him. (I personally think they were a little afraid of his diagnosis.)
The one we are currently seeing has been the most proactive, mainly because she wasn't sure what the heck to do with Jackson and called in the attending for backup.
We attempted to get a panoramic x-ray of Jackson's head, which requires a machine to swing around J's head while he keeps his chin on a bar, while biting on a stick, while remaining perfectly still...
Then we took Jackson to the room with the x-ray machine in it. He flipped and didn't want to go anywhere near it. Jameson wasn't have any part of the "be a good sport and show your brother how to sit here and you will get a sticker." We ended up putting Jackson on the stool, Randy held the back of his head, I held his hands. The dentist would position his head and then dash out of the room to push the button. (This was all while we wearing lead lined suits sufficient for a nuclear meltdown.) As the machine moved around J's head, Randy had to quickly move his hand, wait for the machine to move and then grab J's head again.
After a few attempts at this (each attempt was uglier than the one before it), we got a few blurry pics of one side of J's head. The dentist felt that one tooth was problematic and sent us for an oral surgery consult.
The oral surgeon's office is not at Children's. It's in the complex across the street. Jackson did not like the change of venue. The whole time while we were waiting for our appointment, Jackson howled, literally howled, "Take you downstairs!!" The other patients in the waiting room glared at me. At least the staff was sympathetic and tried to buy his affections with toys from the treasure chest. I now have a purse full of rubber dinosaurs that he could not care less about.
The surgeon was nice and the assistant stayed in the room with us during the visit to distract Jackson while the doctor talked to me. His take on the x-ray was that tooth #20, a molar, is coming in sideways and blocking the teeth behind it, so it's got to come out. The procedure will be done in day surgery with J totally under anesthesia. While he's out, they will get a full set of x-rays, to see what else needs to be done. The first dentist we saw was slightly concerned that J's permanent teeth haven't come down yet, and if they aren't down by the time he's 9, they may have to manually bring them down. That totally squicks me out, so I can't think about that now.
So, he's scheduled for a heath and hx physical next week with the ped, then a desensitization dental visit on the 20th. First week of January a "high-risk anesthesia" consult and then surgery on the 11th. Yikes. Poor guy. He's going to miserable, but at least I got them to wait until after Christmas, so he's not miserable when Santa comes.
Object du Jour: The Target flyer. "What the word say?" He then copies the words onto his Magnadoodle.
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