Dental Surgery

Ah ha! After an entire morning of a fickle computer, I've made one last attempt here to sign in to blogger...and it worked! If you're reading this post and it's before supper time on Thursday it means it kept going until I was done writing. ;)

I am sitting here with Mira post-dental-surgery. She's doing great, but I'm still just not quite ready to try moving her to dress her in her going home clothes.

Sadly, I don't have great "before" pictures, but I'll share what I have:

Ouch. The amount of pain she must be in every day from that mouth is more than I really want to think about.

We've been planning for this surgery since the day after she was discharged from the hospital after coming home to the States. (Well, honestly, we'd been planning it since we met her last September, but the day after discharge was the day it went officially into the schedule!) The big question in our mind has been, "What's going to be left? And what are we going to do about it?" So I asked the surgeon when he came in this morning before surgery. His answer, "I don't know."

You've got to love an honest doctor!

It was wonderful to have him come in to talk after the surgery and say that he only ended up having to pull eleven teeth!! All of her six-year molars are still intact, and best of all, he was able to save the two top front teeth and the little ones on the bottom! It required a pretty substantial cleaning and filling - he said her front right tooth - the dark one - looked like it was all set for a piercing with a big hole in the middle of it! - but the decay had not hit the nerve, so he's pretty confident that what he was able to do will save the tooth. Mira obviously does not need her teeth for eating, but there's nothing like teeth inside a smile to make it look finished.

After photos will come in a few days. Right now she still doesn't look all that great, but the doctor's opinion is that even today she may already feel *better* because the net gain of having the rotting teeth out will more than make up for the pain of the extractions.

We are so grateful that our friend Lindsay just "happened" to email us a few weeks ago asking if she could be of any help this weekend! Knowing that she's at home with the other kids and Matt's able to make it to his meeting this afternoon is wonderful.