Dental Emergency

Why do most emergencies seem to happen while one is on vacation or while ones husband is out of town? Has anyone else noticed that trend or does it just happen to me? In the current case it was both. I’m still in Utah and my husband is back home.

Saturday Count Dooku opened his mouth to speak to me and I thought I saw something unusual. Pulling up his upper lip I discovered this:

That’s something that can freak a mother out eh? You could say I was close to tears immediately, partly because I felt like it was my fault. Count Dooku had been complaining about that tooth for 3 weeks but I figured it was just a cavity and we would see the dentist after we got home! My mother immediately called her dentist’s emergency line and the glorious dentist said he would be at his office in under an hour.

I couldn’t get him there fast enough and then it was traumatic for both of us when I did. Since it was just a baby tooth the dentist decided to pull it and drain the abcess. But of course he had to numb Count Dooku’s tooth which required two shots to the mouth. Count Dooku managed to stay very still but cried and screamed some during the injections (especially the roof of the mouth one). That of course had me in tears too. But after the lidocaine started working we were both able to calm down. Ha! I’m usually very ok with seeing my kids get shots/blood drawn and the like but something about my oldest, bravest, untouchable seeming boy screaming, kind of freaked me out.

After that the dentist pulled out the tooth and used his vacuum to suck out the goop. Now all is well in the tooth department and he’s only charging us for a tooth extraction. He did say the root was much bigger than he’d expected so Count Dooku could be toothless for quite a while. He also said that was the largest abcess he’d seen on a child Count Dooku’s size. I hope this is the first and last abcess any of my kids get.