Back to the Dentist!

Daniel went to the dentist today for the second half of his cleaning.  They gave him a different anesthetic this time, called mepivacaine, and it worked MUCH better than the septocaine.  It's been a little less than two hours since his appointment, and he's almost completely thawed out.  That's much better than the seven hours it took after the septocaine!  :)  So, it looks like he'll be using mepivacaine from now on.

Dental work

Last night I learned another lesson in trusting God. Yesterday Daniel went to a new dentist. Daniel's family has a genetic variation which makes it difficult to process anesthetics. That makes visiting the dentist, after six years of not going, very interesting. They wanted to numb him, and seemed to know about the variation, and what to use instead, even going so far as to grab their local anesthetic go-to book, and show Daniel the list of safe drugs that they use.

They ended up giving him Septocaine, which is on the list of safe drugs. However, when we got home, after spending the afternoon at the in-law's house, because Daniel was too numb to drive home, I googled Septocaine (brand name) and articaine (drug name) and discovered that articaine actually has an additional ester group added to it, and it's the esters that Daniel can't process!

The dentist did tell the first hygienist to make a note in his chart to only give him half the dose of Septocaine, but the hygienist who actually did his cleaning was a different one, and Daniel isn't sure if she gave him half a dose, or the whole dose. We'll definitely need to check on that before his next appointment in December.

Do you like going to the dentist?