Rob and I received a nice financial gift this year for Christmas and decided we would use the money to work down a large list of needs for the family. One of my first decisions was to get the kids to the dentist. No dentist in a one hour radius of our town takes their insurance (or new patients with their insurance) so we have been going to a dentist in town that we like and just pay outright for the services. However, we've been unable to get any of us over there for a few years now and to be honest, it hasn't been much of a thought with all of the other medical emergencies that keep happening. But I knew we needed to just take care of it and so dental appointments were made the week after Christmas. They just went this past Wednesday and it was definitely a day to remember.
All three kids were to have their appointments at the same time and I decided to stay with Anna and just confer with the dentist about the boys afterwards. Nice plan, right? Well, I ended up bouncing around between three different rooms to listen to three different lists of problems with their teeth. I had a pen and notebook out to take notes because I knew I wouldn't remember any of it later, but I was also trying to translate "dental speak" into regular English, which was a little tough. So here are the results:
Matthew: No cavities, the front adult tooth they had to replace looks good and might not even need the root canal they talked about four years ago when it was fixed. He does have a pretty huge overbite and they are talking about some kind of orthodontic appliance. They don't know what it would be yet, since we'd have to start down that path with a consultation, but most likely braces. Overall, his visit went well. We will probably start down that path in a few months after fixing a few things for the other two kids.
Ben: No cavities (which is really surprising considering how often he forgets to brush!), his front tooth that was fixed last spring looks good, and he has the same overbite as Matt. He will also need some kind of appliance in his mouth and the word "headgear" was used, which make me snicker. Couldn't help it--I had images of all the horrible headgear in movies pop into my head. Thank goodness they don't use awful stuff like that anymore! Anyway, he also has a chipped tooth, so we set an appointment in February to take care of it.
Anna: And now, for the bad one: Anna is missing an adult tooth, the one right next to her front middle teeth. And the same tooth on the other side of the front teeth is coming in, but it's too small. She is going to need implants. It's by no means a simple fix either. It will start with a frenulectomy, which is where they will cut her overpronounced frenum so that her front teeth no longer have a gap. That will help when they have to start bonding the teeth to create a space big enough for an implant. When the dentist finished explaining everything to me, he summed it all up by saying, "Basically, it just sucks." That I understood! They wanted to schedule the frenulectomy right away, but she also needs sealants (the boys had theirs done but Anna was too stressed out to continue the appointment) and she has a cavity, so we'll focus on that in February then do the next step. She was a mess by the time we left and cried quite a bit at home. She feels like everything bad always happens to her. And honestly, it does look that way. They can't do most of the work on her missing tooth until she's older, so at least it's not something that will happen all at once.
So that's the scoop on our dental visit. It was crazy and overwhelming, but I'm glad we got the ball rolling on some needed dental work. And now we know what we're doing with all of Rob's overtime pay!
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