Z's dental drama

prior to this weekend Z had only lost his 2 front lower teeth. he had a few loose teeth, but they were hanging on tight. on sun he finally lost an upper front tooth (left) & we put it in an envelope for the tooth fairy. on mon he woke up to a new envelope under his pillow with a $1. (we're lucky, a friend told us someone in her area set the bar by giving $5 a tooth!)

yesterday when i picked him up we were driving out of the parking lot & he told me we had to go back because he forgot his tooth - he lost another one. not the other front tooth, but the one on the other side of the gap. so now he has a big gap in front that's off center, he looks like he should tilt his head for balance.

now here's where it gets ugly...
when we were on the cruise, one night after dinner Z tells us he has a bump in his mouth. we look at it & he has a huge, size of a small grape bump along his lower left gumline. we dont' know what the heck it is so we take him to the on-board nurse (after hours of course). she looked at it, took his vitals & said it was just a boil that would go down in a few days.

we kept an eye on it & a few days after our return Z had a scheduled physical exam. i made sure to tell B to have the dr take a look at it. the dr said it was no big deal & it would go away on it's own.

with the chaos of christmas i forgot about it, then remembered when the front tooth was lost. yesterday morning i called Z's dentist & they scheduled him that afternoon. they took x-rays & said the abcess was from an infection under the baby tooth. it's a molar that had a cavity, the dr previously put a filling in but said the infection was very deep & the tooth had to be removed so it wouldn't affect the adult tooth.

they put the numbing stuff in Z's mouth & the dr returned to give him the shot but Z wasn't having it. he's had fillings done on 2 separate occasions with no problems, but he said he could feel it yesterday. the dr put more numbing stuff on there & returned but still Z would not let him give him the shot.

we talked, we bargained, we told him no matter what the tooth had to come out. we told him even if it didn't happen that day we would just have to come back another day, but he just couldn't do it. it was awful & now we have to go back & do it another day & it will be that much worse.