Emergency Dental Work

So my little man, Shaun, is off at the dentist with Daddy getting some "emergency" dental work done this morning.

...and missing his last class pizza party of the year at school today to do it. ;-(

Shaun was sent to the nurse twice yesterday crying and complaining of tooth pain. I was called after the 2nd one and I picked him up. I could tell he was in some serious pain, so I gave him ibuprofen and called our new pediatric dentist we just saw last week. They were not suprised when I explained the pain was where they are scheduled to do a pulpotomy (mini-root canal) next month, and they figure it is probably infected (absess or something like that they call it).

Because of his extreme anxiety of the Dentist, we had scheduled for this, and other cavities, and removal of his previous pulpotomy tooth that got infected but is not hurting him, and sealants put in...all to be done in one appointment, done under IV sedation. They do this once a month, and May was full - so since he was having no pain at all anywhere at the time - we scheduled it for June.

Well - so much for that. With this pain, and what they suspect to be the culprit, they said they recommend we bring him in and do it without the IV sedation as soon as possible. They even moved some things around to do it this morning first thing.
Sure - we could wait and just treat the pain, and watch him to see if "his face suddenly swells up" and take him to the emergency room instead....Uh - yeah, right! Really?!?

Anyway - so he is at the dentist with Daddy today. I hate not being there, but I have a big deadline for work and really he is much better with Daddy at these types of things anyway. Matt actually asked me NOT to go. (How rude - just kidding - he is right though!)

They will give him a "cocktail" that basically makes him feel woozy and out of it - kind of like he is drunk or something. Then they give him nitrous, then they'll try to give him novicaine to numb it up. Problem is - if the tooth is severly infected - the novicaine might not even work and it won't really numb up. Ugh. It will hurt pretty bad in that case -and knowing how he is normally about the dentist - they have to restrain him just in case. They don't use those horrible boards to do it though - they use "Pillowcase restraint". Basically, put his arms in a pillowcase, and then wrap a blanket around him. It won't fully restrain him, but it slows his arm moving ability down a lot so he can't hurt himself or them by grabbing at things before they can stop him.

I'm almost tearing up just typing that. I guess it is good I won't be there because it would kill me watching that for sure!

I feel so bad for my little boy and I can't imagine this is going to help with his dental anxiety at all! But - it is dangerous to leave be, and all the other dentists I called that have IV sedation have 2 -3 month waiting lists.

So - pray for my little boy to be brave and react very strongly to the "cocktail" so he doesn't remember or feel how bad it is!


UPDATE:
So I've been getting text message updates from Matt every 2-3 minutes as I requested and all went really well! It was very quick too! He reacted very well to the "cocktail", so well he almost feel off the little table he was sitting on while waiting for it to take effect.
They did the xrays and said it was "Very infected", and needed to come out quick. They pillowcased his hands, rolled him up and laid him on the table. (There was even a TV in the ceiling for him to watch while they worked.) It was sooo fast. like minutes and they were done and he was out. They told Matt he didn't even cry one cry. Not one sound. Wow! They are good!

He's home now - gauze in mouth and still pretty numb, but doing okay for now.