Krista's Oral Surgery

Today Krista had oral surgery, a proceedure called an upper labial frenectomy. Basically they had to cut the membrane of skin that holds the upper lip to the gums. In her case this membrane was very thick and low, and as a result was impeding the desent of her lateral incisor due to a large gap between her front two teeth caused by this piece of skin. If the proceedure had not been done, there would always be a space between her two front teeth. The orthodonist said that by simply cutting the skin, that it might even be possible her teeth will pull together on their own without braces, otherwise braces for the uppers are in her future. By the way, if you are wondering what this membrane is, most likely you will feel yours by running your tongue above your teeth where your lip connects inside the mouth (this is the case on both upper and lower lip, but Krista only needed the upper one clipped). The dentist said that in most people it is high and doesn't bother tooth spacing, but in some it is low and interferes.

Krista was a VERY brave girl! I am so proud of her. She marched right in when they called her name, and after the proceedure they said she was "adorable" and "brave". We had an appointment last week and they explained the whole thing so she knew that she would be getting a shot on the gums, be getting the skin cut and also be getting stitches. In all she needed 3 stitches which will be removed in one week. She is taking tylenol now for the pain, and immediately when we got home we iced it for 30 minutes. Now that the tylenol has kicked in she is feeling much better. She was really in a lot of pain there for awhile though.

As a reward for her being so brave I ordered her a few books from Amazon. She knew about this upcoming gift and so she spent ALL DAY yesterday finishing up the book she was reading so she could start on a new one today. She read for about 4 hours yesterday and finished "Little House on the Prairie (vol 3) which is 335 pages! I think she must have read 200 + pages yesterday!!! So now she has ice, icecream, tylenol and a stack of new books to read for her recooperation!