An Extra Tooth

We discovered recently that "Little Man" had an extra permanent tooth present in his mouth.  It was located in the front of his mouth, directly behind his two front teeth.  We met with a local oral surgeon a little over a month ago and determined that it would be in "Little Man's" best interest to have it surgically extracted before it erupted through the gum line and started moving existing teeth around and causing problems.

So this morning, "Little Man," his dad, and I headed in to the oral surgeons office around 7:30 a.m.  "Little Man" was very nervous and I can't say that I blame him after seeing his sister recently go through surgery.  We assured "Little Man" that his surgery would be nothing like his younger sister's surgery and that he wouldn't be spending the night anywhere but home, etc.

Even with all of the prepping that we did ahead of time to prepare him and try to calm him, he was still pretty nervous going into things this morning so the surgeon decided to give him an anti-anxiety medication to calm him before they started any part of the procedure.  We were thankful for that because without it placing the IV would like have not been a good thing for "Little Man."  Even after the anti-anxiety medication, nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"), and a numbing agent to skin at the IV site, "Little Man" still squirmed a bit as the IV was placed into his arm.

The procedure itself took about 15 minutes but we were at the oral surgeon's office for a total of 2 hours from start to finish.  All in all, things went excellent.  "Little Man" awoke with many tears, not understanding why he was in  pain or why his mouth was dry and stuffed with gauze, etc. but within about 6 hours of the surgery he was feeling well enough to go on a car ride with me to go pick up his sister from daycare.  I'm sure he is tired out and will be sleeping well into the morning tomorrow, so we plan on keeping it low-key around this place for the time being!!