The Tooth Fairy

Jorgia without that pesky tooth

The poor old tooth fairy has gotten a fairly good work out in our house recently with Hannah losing a couple of molars and Jorgia losing a bottom tooth. The tooth fairy also had to pay out big bucks for Jorgia's top tooth which she lost recently and here is the story about why......

When she was about two and a half she tripped and almost knocked herself out on one of the supporting poles in our car-port. Her poor little face took most of the impact right down the middle and she had fluid and bruising for weeks. As time went by her two top teeth weren't as white as the others and when we went to the dentist I asked her why. She said because of the trauma to her mouth that the nerves had been damaged and that the teeth were actually dead. Luckily they have never gone black!

Anyway that began months and then years of trouble with those two little teeth and poor Jorgia getting nasty abcesses because of infections etc. The dentist told me that she didn't want to have to take them out because she didn't want to traumatise her and start a fear of the dentist so she suggested putting her on the waiting list to have them removed under anaesthetic at the hospital but she warned that this could take months. One of them was a little wobbly so I said we would take our chances. I encouraged Jorgia to wobble that little tooth at every opportunity but she wasn't that keen.

A few weeks ago Jordan went for his last check up before he turns 18 and can't go to the school dentist anymore. She asked him whether Jorgia still had her teeth and he told her that she did. She said to bring her in so she could look at them. By now one of the teeth was pretty wobbly and the gum had started to shrink around it which looked pretty weird (you can actually see in the photos of her at the Young Archies that it looks like she has a huge gap or that she had lost a tooth when in fact she hadn't).

Anyway I made an appointment to go in on Thursday 1st October and we had to see another dentist not the one we usually see. The morning of the appointment I said to Jorgia not to forget we were going to the dentist and to make sure she brushed her teeth extra well. The announcement of the impending appointment was greeted with jumping and fist pumping and shouts of "yes, the dentist - I can't wait". Gabby and I looked at each other - is she nuts???

Well - the dentist takes one look at the tooth and says that it is so wobbly (which I didn't think it was) that she would just put a bit of numbing stuff on it and pull it out (without any local anaesthetic). She assured me before she did that Jorgia wouldn't feel a thing. She let Jorgia have a good wiggle of it first and then gets the pliers (probably not the scientific name but lets face it - thats what they are) and starts to yank on this so-called "hanging by a thread tooth". Poor Jorgia, as suspected it was holding on a bit harder than the dentist had thought so ended up being quite a traumatic experience.

So, to say the least, I was a little annoyed. Here I was with this child who was excited and enthusiastic to visit the dentist and she ended up having the traumatic experience that we had tried to avoid. Anyway after I calmed her down we went back to work and Lou gave her a lovely book because she was so brave and we all made a fuss of her.

When we got home I told her to leave her tooth out and that she was sure to get paid well for it because of how brave she was.

Because of the stress involved the tooth fairy was spared filling out the usual "questionaire" that our girls leave for her with questions such as "What are your parent's names?, What do you like to eat?, What are your friends names?, Do you have any pets and what are they called?, What do you use the teeth for? As you can imagine the tooth fairy has to think long and hard about the answers to those questions and make sure that it is written in suitable unidentifiable "fairy looking" writing!!!