Dear Ravi,
Like you, mom does not like dental procedures. Autistic people find dentists terrifying. Dentists put their fingers in your mouth. The drills sound like fingernails on a chalkboard and feel about as bad. One is tipped into weird positions in the dental chair, and feels trapped. In short, not fun. A while ago, Mommy chipped a pre-molar tooth. I could not find any dental office that would take my state insurance. I finally happened upon the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. I had an appointment last Wednesday. A very nice and gentle dental student named Nathan discovered that I needed a root canal. I was very worried about that, but he told it that the procedure would not be that bad and he would use lots of anesthesia. Thursday afternoon I rolled in to have the root canal done. Besides having a dental dam and a bite block in my mouth for 2 hours, it was not terrible. I was discharged, told to take alternating Ibuprofen and Tylenol for pain and given an emergency number to call if things got worse. Jason said I was a great patient and that he would see my Monday afternoon for a cleaning.
As you know, last weekend was your second heavenly anniversary. I was not at all focused on my tooth. That night we had a lovely evening with Lauren, Andrew, and baby Cora. I was noticing a fair amount of pain. Going to the bathroom to look for painkillers, I glanced in the mirror and nearly jumped a foot in the air. I looked like a stroke victim. The left half of my face was swollen and frozen and my lip drooped down. I looked like Donald Trump. Eew! I showed myself to Daddy who agreed that things did not look good. I spent the night icing my jaw and taking pain relief. Nothing helped. I called the emergency dental number only to be told that it was out of order. Around 5am, wracked with pain, I called the nurse line. She was very nice but told me since I had been seen by dentist, she could not help me. She gave me another emergency number to call which did not work, either. I was beyond frustrated. At 8am I started calling the dental clinic. I kept being put on hold and after 15 minutes the call would roll over to voice mail, where I had already left 2 messages. Daddy suggested that we just walk in and say that I was having a dental emergency and see if they could help. I had a 1:15 pm appointment but knew I could not last that long. The pain was on a level only slightly below passing a kidney stone or giving birth.
We arrived at the clinic and ran into the most unhelpful desk attendant. She claimed that the emergency number was working just fine, I had a 1:15 pm appointment, she would leave a message for Jason, but that was all she would do. I was almost in tears. Daddy was as fed up as I was, and we walked down the street to the Emergency Room. Amazingly, it was mostly empty. I was taken in triage in less than 10 minutes. The nurse was very kind. I was not running a temperature, probably due to all the pain killers, but I was having chills. My vitals were stable. 10 minutes later we were seen by a young medical student. He was also very kind. He examined me, could see signs of infection, and offered some stronger pain killers. I accepted. At this point, my memories are very fragmented. I remember being on a bed and having an IV of narcotics and an antibiotic. Two hours later we were discharged. I was in little pain but very wobbly. From there, Daddy and I went to pick up my meds from the pharmacy, he grabbed a bite to eat, and we headed back to the dental clinic.
At the clinic, Nathan was very concerned. Even though all of his work had been overseen and approved by a senior dentist he felt terrible. He whisked us down a floor to endodontics and ran a scan. Looking at the scan was really interesting. I could see my teeth in 3 D. Under one pre- molar was a large dark shape. I asked Nathan and his attending what it was. They told me that the black area was all infection and that they were going to drain it. Ravi, even though I really dislike narcotics, I was happy to have them on board right then. I had absolutely no fear. It was great! They numbed me up, cut an incision in the gum and drained the canal. As the pus was draining, I felt almost instant relief. Whee! The two of them sent a very wobbly mama home with a number to the attending dentist’s direct line. She said to text her immediately if anything went wrong.
Ravi, it is now 3am on Wednesday and the pain is back. I am taking pain relief, but not narcotics because I hate feeling stupid, icing my jaw and writing to you. Sweet boy, I know how often dental pain is discounted in the autistic population because many of us, certainly including you, cannot explain where things hurt. We just know that something bad is going on. Also, often being people pleasers, we don’t want to raise a fuss. To all autistic people and their parents out there, please raise a fuss. Dental pain is no joke, and if your child is like Ravi or me, they may have a freaky high pain tolerance. I know that finding autism friendly dentistry can be really hard, but please try, for your own sake, or the sake of your child. Dental problems will not resolve on their own, they only get worse.
So, Ravi, here I sit at 3am. I have cat on my lap and dogs at my feet. I am icing my jaw. At 7am I will text the nice dentist who gave me her direct line and ask for help again. I just hope that this does not mess up our trip to Virginia on Saturday. Nathan thought that this would not be a problem, but this was on Monday when I was actually responding to pain killers. I hope that there are no dental emergencies in heaven, Ravi. I hope and trust that you will never be in pain again. I will keep you posted about what happens today. Love you forever, Mom.
