An alternate title to this might be “welcome to the sometimes very scary world of special needs dentistry.” When you have a kiddo who needs sedation or anesthesia, even outside of a pandemic, you can wait months to get a cavity repaired. Even when a bigger chunk of the tooth is gone (as we encountered in Tony’s mouth on Dec. 27Th, 2020) the best case scenario for receiving treatment or repair is often at least about a month away. For any typically functioning individual, it would have probably been fixed the day of his very first appointment regarding this matter (if not within a day or two of that), and it is incredibly heartbreaking that the resources and relatively few specialists capable of handing individuals with this level of need are stretched so thinly that lower functioning disabled individuals are put through weeks of pain and the risk of complications that can become life-threatening.
Dec 27, 2020, day tooth damage discovered 
Jan 11, 2021, early stages of an abscess 
Jan 14, 2021, tooth continuing to decay
A few days ago, our little man began developing an abscess, and no, that black stuff coming out of the hole in his tooth isn’t food. Tony has been tolerating 90 seconds of tooth brushing two times a day or more for quite some time now, and I am cleaning out whatever food I can out of that hole every time he eats. That tooth is literally rotting out of his head at this point.
His procedure date was moved up two days, and he’s now on antibiotics, but that was the best that can be done…and if his condition deteriorates, we have to head into the ER. We’re five days out from his procedure. And, because sometimes this is just the way life goes, I sprained my left ankle last Thursday, and it’s currently still displaying one of the few types of purple I really don’t like to see on my body. If it were eye shadow that same color-fine. But this? No thanks! And yet, here I am just the same.
My hands are full because our little man is having a hard time with all of this, and I can barely focus on writing even this much. In order to better care for Tony, Hannah, Bandit, and myself, I will be taking time off from writing for our blog for the next two weeks. Thank you for your patience and understanding. <3 Ariana
