Successful Surgery

I am happy to report that Alyson had a successful surgery this afternoon and she is recovering nicely. She was a big trooper through the whole thing, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt or she wasn't uncomfortable during or after. I am sure the picture below will give you a good idea of her feelings toward the whole thing. Jessica and I sure had our own troubles just watching the surgery. It is tough to explain to a four year old that she has an extra tooth and that it will likely cause her pain (and us orthodontia bills) in the future so she has to go through some pain now to not have those problems later. Luckily, Aly is a great girl and accepted it quickly.


If you didn't catch Jessica's first blog on this issue, Alyson had (past tense) an extra tooth in between her adult incisors. You can see it in the x-ray below the doctor let me borrow (I just had to show everyone this). As your looking at the picture below the teeth on the top (on the very outside nearest the black) are her current teeth and she actually lost the one that looks like it is the "tallest" a couple of weeks ago. The extra tooth is the one that caused the first one to fall out (we actually blamed Koco - sorry kiddo). It is round and pretty large and sits in between her two adult teeth (the big teeth you can barely see through her gums in the x-ray). I thought it was pretty cool, so I decided to help out the blog and give Jessica a rest. Hope you all share my sentiment!


If you want more information on Aly's condition take a look at this Wiki page: Hyperdontia. Alyson had what is called a mesiodens - which is what you will learn about on this second page (if you are really interested). The doctor told us that only 1 in a 1,000 kids have this, but according to the International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry it is actually more like 2 in 100 (and boys are twice as likely). FYI. Can you tell that I like to do research or what? I guess I chose the right field!!!