Charlotte's Filling

Our poor little Charlotte has been through a lot this summer - broken collar bone, rabies immune globulin and a series of vaccines, a tick, and now a filling.  She went to the dentist last month where he found some decay and refereed us to a pediatric dentist.  We saw him yesterday for a first visit and was due to a cancellation was able to fit us in today for the filling.  Charlotte's upper left molar is not formed properly/completely and is therefore susceptible to decay.  (I had always thought that the molar looked odd, like it had an extra bit, but in reality the tooth is not fully formed.)  Her cavity was at the back of the tooth, where the tooth was tapered and the enamel wall was thin.  There was a chance she would need a crown.

Our pediatrician commented that this pediatric dentist is an oddball but the best, and she was right.  The narration to distract/reassure Charlotte during the technical procedure was a bit convoluted and started with a princess pillow and an imaginary bird (which was clearly hanging from the ceiling) and then moved on to a story about a circus with a clown (he showed her a slightly freaky clown doll then pretended to paint her face and put on her nose of laughing gas), Ellie the elephant (the instrument that squirts water), and a magician.  She actually did very well until right at the end, when he was bonding the tooth.  The whole experience was exhausting (plus she had a cold), and she fell asleep in the car on the way home, with her tooth pillow in her mouth.