I F Dental

For the first 3 years of Bogey's life, he was fed mostly though a tube directly into his stomach.  He was not a big fan of eating or drinking though his mouth.  He actually didn't like anything near his mouth.  It seemed that after every surgery on his cleft lip or palate, or flap or whatever, he'd revert back to his "Nothing gets in or out of this mouth" stage.  Brushing his teeth made things much worse.

Needless to say, going to the dentist isn't on Bogey's list of "Fun Things to Do".   He hates it.  As luck would have it, he inherited my stellar genetics of weak teeth.  Up until I was about 21, every time I went to the dentist, I had at least one cavity.  Sometimes I'd walk out of the office with 6 or 7.  I'm pretty sure the dentist I went to rejoiced every time I had an appointment.  He knew he'd be getting a raise that day.

Last time Bogey had cavities, he had them filled while he was getting a cardiac MRI at Stanford.  This time, we didn't have any reason to have anasthesia at Stanford, so we were given two options.

1) Go to Primary Children's and have the cavities filled (which would also require the headache of being evaluated by a dentist down there...) or,
2) Have the cavities filled here at EIRMC (which, last time Bogey was at EIRMC, the ER doctor was using Google to research Bogey's heart condidition and unifocalization surgery).

I am going to be honest here.  While we love Primary Children's hospital for so many reasons, we don't love it for the experience we had when we were there after Bogey's big surgery back in 2012.  I have not set foot on the premises since we left.  Just the mere thought of walking into that lobby pretty much sends me into panic mode.  Yeah, I'm still kind of a mess in my head.

We opted to stay here and take our chances.  (We actually really prayed about it, and honestly felt confident about being here.)  Naturally, I went to my neighbor (the counselor), and cried my eyes out to her in a panic.  She listened to me, assured me Bogey would be fine, and told me not to let my fears overcome my faith.

The morning of the procedure, I felt the familiar wad growing in my stomach.  It only got worse when I learned that they were not going to pre-medicate him before wheeling him back to surgery.  I was so worried about him freaking out.

He did freak out when we seperated, and my heart broke into a million pieces.  I went out to the car, bawled my head off (you know, like I do at the beginning of every surgery he's ever had) and then drove home to check on our other children.  I grabbed a doughnut for Ace on my way back to the hospital and I drank my 3rd Diet Coke.

I paced until the procedure was over.  I felt exactly the same way at both his open heart surgeries, and all of his cleft surgeries.  Time drags on, and I can't sit still.

When we got to Bogey he was waking up, and he threw up.  He's never been able to throw up before. (He has a nissen fundoplication-- the upper curve of the stomach is wrapped around the esophagus and sewn into place--after it was done, the surgeon told us that he'd probably never be able to vomit.)  Fun times.  I mainly add this tidbit for record keeping sake.

We were home by 11 a.m. and it was so nice to be able to be home with all of our kids rather than in a hotel room far away.

I did miss my trip to the Nike store though.

Hopefully we won't have to deal with cavities for a while.