At the dentist

posted in: Kuya Bear

Photo: “Dentist + Barber” by JD Hancock, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved

The dreaded day has come.  E bear’s teeth, which already showed some decay, is causing him pain, so much so that he woke up one night crying.  We gave him a dose of Paracetamol.  Thankfully, it relieved the pain so he was able to go back to sleep.  But the pain was back when he woke up in the morning.  We knew that it was time to do something about the teeth.

Background: E had great teeth until 3 years old–or at least it seemed so.  The decay was so rapid, in a matter of a few months, we noticed that his front teeth seemed to be forming a bigger and bigger gap.  A trip to the pedia dentist confirmed what we suspected:  E Bear had tooth decay.

At the time, we (Papa Bear and Mama Bear) and the dentist were hesitant to have tooth work on E Bear.  Why?

Our E Bear, at that time (barely 4 years old), was very young and couldn’t sit still in the dental chair.  We had to literally force him to sit still.  He was crying all the while.  The only way for the dentist to do any decent dental work, or even exam was to have him sedated.  But we had reservations about sedation, since E Bear had a history of neonatal seizures.  Although he no longer had them and probably wouldn’t, we were afraid that sedation might trigger some idiosyncratic reactions.

So, the general plan was to just hope that the teeth would at least last until it was ready to fall off and replaced with permanent teeth and just do procedures as needed.

Another dentist friend recommended Clinpro dental creme instead of regular toothpaste to at least slow down the progression of the decay.

We were able to stall for almost 2 years before E Bear complained of pain.

At 5 years and 10 months, E Bear had his first dental procedure.  It was quite simple really.  The dental put in a temporary filling.  I was so proud of E Bear because he was very behaved during the procedure.  He opened his mouth wide when asked to do so.  While he had some apprehensions about the dental instruments, he was able to sit through the procedure.  No anesthesia whatsoever.  No sedation.  No drilling was done yet, though.

The filling is only temporary, though.  I have to get a panoramic xray of E’s teeth so that the dentist could determine what we could still do.  The front teeth look very bad, but then he will be 6 years old in a couple of months’ time so we’re hoping they will just fall off without having to extract them.

We hope that E Bear will be in a better position to take care of his teeth when they become permanent.

This entry was posted on July 31, 2011 at 9:28 am and is filed under Kuya Bear (Tags: , , ). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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