Henry is a funny boy. Charming, unique, creative, friendly and cute but he is also often a difficult and unreasonable boy. Eight years of blogging about his antics back me up on this.
In a lot of ways, he is so much easier and more mature than he used to be. More and more, I am able to reason with him out of a frustrating moment or, better yet, prepare and practice with him before he has to go through a potential emotional minefield so that his reactions and behavior are more palatable for public consumption.
Unfortunately, there are times when I have to send Henry into situations where I am pretty sure he is going to struggle. Those times usually occur about every 6 months when Henry is due to see his dentist.
To preface and explain some of his behavior, Henry was born with an oral/motor delay. He had a newborn tongue-tie and still deals with poor tongue muscle action, which contributes to his speech disability. To top it all off, he has the most sensitive gag reflex I’ve ever seen. He can’t handle having anything in his mouth, which is why he is such a poor brusher, which is why he has so many cavities, which is why he has to go to the dentist so often. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he’s addicted to sugar. I mean...If you give a mouse a cookie!
When we first moved here, we picked a dentist from the plethora of LDS dentists in our area. After one attempted cleaning, this dentist said Henry was a tricky patient and would be better served at a place that specializes in pediatric dentistry so we tried one of those strip mall places. I know...but we were just out of residency and saving for a house and paying for all of our dental care out of pocket and I thought it would be good enough. I was super unhappy with the place (they put all of those silver caps on his teeth without asking me if I’d rather have them in tooth color) so we found the one and only and thus expensive board certified pediatric dentist in this small town. Even with all of their kid friendly gadgets, colorful rooms, prize boxes and movies playing on their ceilings, Henry’s issues continued. I’m not privy to their private conversations but I’m pretty sure Henry ranks near the top of their difficult patients list. They probably have special meetings to prepare for his visits...perhaps draw straws to see who’s going to wrestle with him and clean up his vomit this time. He’s that bad.
We’ve been through it all there. Sedation, nitrous oxide, no treatment at all because he kept throwing up the sedation medicine, and even a few successful treatments that lulled us all into thinking he might be maturing out of this oral hygiene nightmare. His varied experiences have turned me into one of those jittery lab rats who either gets shocked or rewarded with food when they press a button. Not knowing what to expect - the horrible or the tame - I feel anxious each time an appointment approaches. Henry, on the other house, has no apprehension. Each time, he is sure that he is going to do great. It’s bizarre.
This last time was no different. It’s a little misleading when I say, “last time” because it makes it seem as if it was only one appointment when it was actually three. The first was his regularly scheduled check-up with cleaning and x-rays which, as usual, showed two new small cavities in his permanent molars. The second appointment was the attempt to fill those cavities but ended prematurely because he would not let them put cotton in his mouth to dry the area for the filling. I do not know exactly why they need to have the treated area free from wetness and saliva but they assure me they do and it’s become Henry’s stumbling block. They can even drill his tooth without issue but as soon as they put something in his mouth to keep it open or dry, the struggle begins. They gave up, put in a temporary filling and told me he’d have to come back and either be sedated or restrained. We’ve gone the sedation route in the past and it’s not pretty (he won’t swallow the nasty tasting medicine) so I chose the papoose.
I told him what to expect and he was honestly fine with the idea. He even agreed that it would probably help him stay calm if he knew he couldn’t push their arms away. When they brought him back to the treatment area, I chose to stay in the waiting room. Honestly, it’s just better now if I can’t see him struggle. It’s too....everything.
After 45 minutes, his hygienist/assistant came out to give me an update. She said he did great with the drilling but things took a drastic turn for the worse when they started the filling again. He was aggressively fighting them now and it was pretty bad. Lots of thrashing his head and crying and screaming and gagging. They wanted to know if I wanted them to stop or go ahead and do the second filling. Without hesitating, I said, “Please, just finish. Get it over with.” I had absolutely NO desire to come back for a fourth time.
About 20 minutes after that, Henry, his hygienist, and the dentist came out to the waiting room. The hygienist looked exhausted. Henry’s entire face was red and sweaty and his eyes were bloodshot. The dentist looked amused. With a suspicious smile on her face, she said Henry had said the funniest thing when they were all done.
Apparently, Henry continued to gag and even threw up onto the hygienists’ shoes. He cried and screamed but they got their work done as fast as they could and when they were done, they sat him up, took off the papoose and said, “Henry! Henry! You are done! You did it! We are all done!” He stopped crying, sort of looked around angrily, sniffed, wiped his face with the back of his hand and said, “Well...sometimes you just gotta do what you don’t want to do.” Like some cowboy in a western. Like some sensei in a karate fight. Like some kid who did not just scream and gag and barf through his entire dentist appointment.
I laughed so hard I got tears in my eyes. The dentist was equally amused and said Henry was a “special” boy. Then, she told me that next time, he would have to be sedated. The dangers of aspirating will keep him from being part of the difficult patient papoose club or the difficult patient nitrous oxide club. In spite of everything he heard us talking about, he seemed so proud of himself, red face and all. I am proud of him too for doing the best he is able to do, even though that best effort is so different from what I wish for. Until the next time....(which I am totally dreading).
