What has her so excited that she can't stop smiling?!
She's going to her very first DENTIST appointment, OF COURSE!!
Doesn't everyone get this excited for the dentist?! She seriously could not stop smiling!
Yes, at four years old, we are a little late to the dentist party, but every time I went to make an appointment for her, something else came up. Last summer, Grady's puking and fussy issues ruled our summer and sucked our patience. And this past summer, Grady's ear infection issues zapped all my energy and doctor office mojo. But in the last couple months, we have noticed that one of Whitney's front teeth has started creeping up on the other front tooth. So I figured it was finally time to make the appointment and make it happen. And I also thought, after hearing probably hundreds of dentist visit horror stories, I should capitalize on Whitney's extreme excitement about her first trip to the dentist.
She literally smiled through the entire visit!
Her little brother, on the other hand, wasn't so sure what these people were doing to his big sister.
He kept saying "Bug! Bug?!" And reaching for her as the spit sucker did it's noisy job. I got the impression that Grady's very first dentist visit will be significantly different than Whitney's first dentist trip. Yikes.
After Whitney's teeth were cleaned and sparkly, the dentist came to take a peek and speak with me. The hygienist had asked me if Whitney had banged her teeth or been an accident, but didn't elaborate when I said no. Obviously I thought it was a weird question, but Whitney had told us recently that her tooth was loose. I guess I should have listened and inspected more carefully.....
.... Because the dentist wiggled her front teeth which are both loose. He said that it only could have happened from a "blunt force trauma to her teeth or face." He took some x-rays and showed me two very significant cracks underneath Whitney's gums, near the roots of her two front teeth.
We can kept asking Whitney if she recalled any fall, or if someone accidentally hit her (apparently very hard!), or if she ever remembered her teeth being bonked at all. She was adamant that no one had ever hit her teeth, she had never fallen on her face, and she doesn't know why her teeth would be loose. And neither Eric nor I remember her ever complaining about her teeth hurting, she never had a fat lip, and we never heard from school or church about any falls or injuries that would've caused her two front teeth to be cracked so significantly.
So while the entire visit can be considered a success, we now wait for her baby teeth to either turned gray and/or fall out. Then, we call the dentist and schedule surgery to remove the roots before they get infected or abscessed. Fun times ahead!
Looking at her x-ray, you can see the giant crack in the tooth on the right. And a smaller crack in the tooth on the left. Just looking at these pictures makes me shiver and cringe at how hard she would've had to hit those teeth in order to crack them that deep. The dentist said that the only time he sees cracks this significant, the child is sitting in his chair screaming in pain after some type of injury, accident, or "baseball to the face". I have no idea how this little girl can brave such pain without even mentioning it. Whoa.
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