Dear friends,
Glory to God ! Abby`s operation went well.
We were told she would be intubated under anaesthetic for 45 minutes for extensive dental surgery. It was far more complex than the surgeon originally thought, and she was actually in theatre for almost 2 hours....................so DH and I were biting our fingernails down to the knuckles at this point !
She was in recovery/observation with us for a further 2 and 3/4 hours before the anaesthetic staff were happy for her to come home.
She has a fairly rare genetic disorder called Amelogenesis Imperfecta .
Put it this way, in our town of 18,000 souls there may be perhaps one child with AI.
Guess what, *both* of my youngest have it :-((((
It is like Brittle Bone Disease, but primarily only affects enamel, so their teeth initially appeared perfect when they first appeared, then literally lumps of enamel start to shear off the teeth, leaving the dentine underneath raw and exquisitely sensitive to pain, decay and infection.
Abby had her first op last December to remove 5 front upper teeth which had deteriorated so much in 6 weeks that they could not be saved.
Today she has had one further extraction of an unsalvageable tooth, plus one filling, plus stainless steel caps on all her back teeth to protect them as much as possible.
They are hopeful that the secondary teeth will be less badly affected.
Of course, because the baby teeth act as guides for the adult teeth to follow down, the loss of her baby front teeth means that she will require *extensive* orthodontic work at a later date to correct the inevitable problems as the adult teeth grow misaligned.
Not nice, but as my DH always says, there are many, many worse things than this disorder :-)
She is sitting watching Rugrats Go Wild and eating a cookie, and seems perfectly happy :-)
Thank you all so much for your prayers !
Glory to God for all things, and heartfelt thanks to the Theotokos, St Nicholas, Righteous Abigail, St Lucy, the Great Martyr St Barbara and her Guardian Angel for their intercessions.
3 comments:
Glory to Christ, Elizabeth! Glad she made it through!
We give thanks for Abby's safety and will continue to pray for her general dental health.
I'm sorry that I was out of touch with the blogosphere on the critical day, or we would have been praying then too. Clearly God was able to handle it without my input. No surprise there. But we would have been praying anyway.
I am glad that Abigail's operation went. We will keep praying for her.
Post a Comment