I learn so much from my kids. Most of the time I learn a lot about myself. Whether it be my lack of patience, my intense capacity of love, my rude behavior or how horrible I sound when I say mean things. (Have you ever heard your child say something that you yourself have said and when you hear it back out of their sweet little mouth it sounds about 5 bazillion times worse? Ugh, I cringe at those moments)
Today I learned a lot about my anxiety from my son. I took him to the dentist to get sealants on his 6-year molars. No big deal right?
WRONG!
First of all, let me start at the beginning of the story. His top front tooth has been loose FOR.EV.ER! It is literally hanging on my a thread and it is DRIVING ME CRAZY! It looks so horrible and is starting to turn gray. I want to rip it out sooooo bad but I have thus far controlled myself. I did, however, tell him that he had all of Spring Break to pull it out himself or else when we went to the dentist this morning I was going to have them pull it out for him. He agreed that he would let them pull it out.
That was my first mistake. I should have known that he was pulling a fast one on me there. HE won't pull it out, he won't let ME pull it out...he won't let me wiggle it or even look at it very long. What was I thinking believing that he was going to let some total stranger rip it out? But I digress.
While we're in the waiting room he is running all around and in generally good spirits. When they call us back to the exam room he lays right down and then hears me talking about my plans for them to pull the tooth out after they do the sealants like him and I had talked about. Well, that sets the tone for the whole appointment.
As soon as they start messing with the loose tooth he starts FREAKING out! He says it's hurts. So the hygienist put some topical numbing medicine on the gums and tells him we will let that tooth get tingly while she works on his sealants. The first step of the sealants is brushing the tooth so it's clean before it's sealed. So she starts polishing it with that thing that sounds somewhat like a mini drill. He freaks out and says it hurts. Then she blows air on it to dry it. He starts kicking his legs and says it hurts. It's freaking AIR! Then she has to put this cotton thing lined with plastic in between his tooth and his cheek so no stuff gets on his cheek and he says that PIECE OF COTTON hurts. Next she paints on the stuff with A PAINTBRUSH and he freaks out and says that hurts. I mean it was everything. The hygienist was trying to be nice and told him there is a difference between something that feels weird and something that hurts and she needs to know if something is REALLY hurting or if he is just scared because something feels different.
Okay, the logical side of me totally understood where she was coming from but the freaked-out-mess part of me that is also, unfortunately, a part of my son knew that when you're all worked up like that....they are basically the same thing. Long story short she ended up trying to make things better by giving him nitrous thinking that would calm him down....it didn't. It just made him say he had a stomach ache along with being all worked up and freaked out. Then her and I talked and although I really wanted the tooth out at that appointment his well-being is waaaay more important so we told him we would ABSOLUTELY not mess with the loose tooth today. It still didn't really calm him down...the damage was already done. But 50 minutes later, for something that should have taken 15, the sealants were on all 4 teeth.
Now, I mention this whole convoluted story because THIS IS SOOOOO ME! But what I realized today was how ridiculous it all is. When you're inside the vortex of a panic attack there is really nothing anyone else can do calm you down. The mind is a powerful thing. I know this. But today's perspective on the whole thing makes me realize a little bit how sometimes things that seems like a huge deal are really not that big of deal and HOPEFULLY when I am in the throws of one of my own panic attacks I can look back on this experience and calm myself down by realizing that whatever it is that I'm panicking about is probably not that big of a deal. Like the hygienist said, "there is a difference between things that feel different and things that hurt".
****UPDATE*****
So while I was at the dentist they did in fact confirm that the tooth was hanging on by a thread. She showed me how to take dental floss and slide in between the gum and the tooth and pop the tooth right out. Well when The Bull (he's a huge Chicago Bulls fan these days and a Taurus) got home from school I tried out my technique on him after a few minutes of fighting and the tooth really did pop right out with no effort on my part and flew across the room. Yay! Finally!!
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