Pearl's visits to the dentists

Pearl visited the dentist for the first time last week after frequent complains of tooth ache. The aching became more intense that her teacher has to give her pain killer and called me to bring her home earlier one afternoon.

We were very reluctant to pull her decayed tooth due to her young age, scaring that the pain will deter her from visiting the dentist in the future, furthermore, she still does not know that she has to bite the cotton tightly after tooth pulling to stop bleeding; the injection will also create a greater fear in her.

After the first visit to the dentist, the dentist advised to extract her tooth because it can not be saved anymore; but we opted to give her antibiotic and pain killer first to see how it goes.

But the medication did not help to stop the pain. She still complaint tooth ache every time she eats. We were advised to get her tooth pull by many, however, one of our nephew managed to save his tooth by putting medicine and sealing back the decayed tooth, it cost a bomb too...RM250.00 per tooth.

Just the day before we decided to revisit the same dentist to pull her tooth, I was very disturb with the decision. While at work, I asked Clet to bring her to another dentist to get a 2nd opinion. We got the same answer, that is to pull her teeth.

Still not satisfied with the previous 2 dentists' advises we wanted a 3rd opinion from another dentist, this time we went to the same dentist that our nephew got his tooth saved. We walked in without any appointment and waited for an hour, luckily there is a TV with cartoon on to entertainment our girls. We were the last customer on that evening.

The first 2 visits to the dentists were merely checking without treatment so Pearl had no fear going in this dentist room. After consulting this 3rd dentist, a replacement dentist from QE, he has got the solution that we wanted, that is he is able to save her tooth.

While in the process of digging and cleaning her tooth, she started to feel the pain and felt uncomfortable. Daddy has to persuade her to cooperate, but did not do much help, the dentist has to shorten the cleaning process, quickly apply the medicine and seal up the tooth. Pearl ended up crying and vomited on the dentist chair.

Pearl was in tears for quite a while, the longest that I can remember. Crystal, being the caring big sister, kept on telling stories and making funny stuff just to divert Pearl's attention away from her pain and unpleasant dental treatment. It was a very good idea to help Pearl get over the pain.

Before the treatment, she was given a toy sunglasses to avoid the bright dentist's lamp

Started to check on her tooth

I forgot about the name of the treatment, it does help to save the tooth and get rid of the toothache, but the smell of the medicine is so strong that I still can smell it while Pearl opens her mouth after 2 days, hope the smell will fade away soon.

It was our fault that we did not insist her to brush her teeth everyday. We should have done so even with her strong resistance in brushing teeth. Now she has got a lot of decayed tooth need to be treated. After this dental treatment experience, we don't think we could get her to the dentist again.

With dentist advise, we have stopped her from taking her milk bottle to sleep at night, insist she brush her teeth in the morning and at night before sleep, gargle after each meal and milk as much as possible, hope this will help to avoid any toothache and infection on her teeth until time for her to change her milk teeth.