There have been very few occasions in my life that I can even come close to agreeing with anything Michael Gove has said. But sometimes people who purport to be experts, and yet directly contradict each other, really do vex me quite considerably.
I'd been having a lovely day today. I was thinking that writing a positive post tonight would be a walk in the park, because I was feeling genuinely upbeat and happy.
And then I took LittleBear to the dentist.
We've been to the dentist before. The first time was mostly a "hello". The second time involved looking in his mouth. The third time was the rather traumatic occasion when I carried a small boy in, sobbing and dripping with blood from a mashed up face to be inspected, after coming off his bicycle face-first. On that occasion, the quick thinking of one of my friends had resulted in a knocked-out tooth being replaced. The lovely dentist was quite content with this, and told me the tooth might take root again, or might not, but it wouldn't be a problem either way, and (this is the important bit) that we'd done the right thing.
The tooth re-rooted, and has caused no problems.
The lovely dentist has left.
We have a new dentist.
This was the first time we'd met the new dentist.
He informed me that we shouldn't have put the tooth back in. He suggested that the correct course of action would be to extract the tooth now, in case of infection, as the gum looks a little bit red. The tooth has been back in, and perfectly happy, for SEVEN MONTHS. Seriously? He wants to pull it out, just in case a slight redness of the gum is because it got infected when it was put back in seven months ago.
As the tooth in question is already wobbly, and likely to come out perfectly naturally in the next few months, I decided to go with his alternative (reluctant) offering of "wait and see". It's not that I don't take my son's dental hygiene seriously, or the protection of his teeth and gums, but I'd much rather keep an eye on a gum and see if it becomes any more red, and let LittleBear's tooth fall out of its own accord if possible, than inflict a tooth extraction on a small boy and potentially put him off dentists for life. I'm pretty certain that hating dentists and all their work would do his long-term dental health a lot more harm than "having a slightly red gum".
And I'm left with a Govian distaste for experts, having had two different dentists tell me diametrically opposite things about LittleBear's tooth. One of them must be wrong. And since I clearly don't want the one who agreed with my friend's actions, and who reassured me that I'd done the right thing to be the Wrong Dentist, I'm left being forced to disagree with the expert opinion of my current dentist. Who'll be looking at my teeth on Wednesday.
My lovely happy day has turned into a stressful, annoying day with a looming sense of dread at having to see New Dentist again, and find out all the things that are wrong with my teeth as well. I'm already worried about what he'll say about the wire that cements six of my teeth together...
Not to mention that horrible lurking sense of doubt about whether I've taken the right path, whether I've actually risked the development of LittleBear's big teeth, whether new dentist is right and that tooth is best off out, and always was best off out. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm being a bad mother. Maybe, maybe, maybe...
So now my Happy Day has been turned into a Fretful Week. Bother.
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