Cool, Calm and Toothless
Some people don’t have a very high pain tolerance. Then there are others that can handle quite a bit. My Nathan has always been the latter. His pain tolerance often shocks me.
Nathan was only 9 years old and one of his back teeth was hurting him. It wasn’t loose, but was causing pain. We were going to our routine dental appointment and decided to talk to the dentist about the pain he was having. It was determined that there wasn’t anything visibly wrong with the tooth, but as it was a baby tooth, we could have it pulled for him. The suggestion was to give him the standard oral shot to numb the area and then extract the tooth. I thought “Ok – sounds good.”
Nathan, on the other hand, didn’t like this idea. He definitely wanted to have the tooth removed, but where he disagreed was the idea of having the shot to numb his mouth. We tried to talk him into it, but even at 9 years old, he was set in his mind that shots sucked and there was no way they were going to give him one inside his mouth.
The dentist got Nathan prepped and ready for the extraction. He informed us that we could stop at any point if the pain got too great and get the shot. I offered Nathan my hand in support and the dentist started on his work.
He grabbed onto the tooth with what looked like a pliers and began to wrench the tooth back and forth, trying to loosen it from Nathan’s mouth. I was sweating, and my hands were clammy, but Nathan was a rock. He didn’t even flinch. This went on for only about 5 minutes, but to me, it felt like hours.
Finally, the tooth popped out and it was over. I released the breath that I had been holding and wiped off my sweaty hands. Nathan was still in control. He was smiling and laughing and cool as a cucumber! I was in shock and awe! Here was a 9-year-old that handled the pain that most adults wouldn’t even consider enduring.
To this day, he is my strong one, but he has rethought the numbing shots. He recently had his wisdom teeth out and when the nurse said, “You’re a big strong guy – you probably only want the local anesthetic.” He replied, “Nope, knock me out and wake me when it’s over.” In my opinion, that was the smarter choice!
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