Let the kids handle their own surgery

I don’t think the events surrounding this column will win me any parenting awards but I am willing to share as a lesson to others.

My youngest child, who is hardly a child anymore, needed to get her wisdom teeth removed while on Christmas break from university. And somehow we decided that the best course of action was to allow her and her older sister to take care of this little procedure on their own.

I don’t mean actually doing the dental work themselves. I just mean we left them entirely responsible.

Emma took the bus from university directly to her sister’s place, about an hour and a half away from our home and, conveniently, close to the dentist who would be performing this little extraction.

This all seemed to be a perfect scenario. Well, perfect for me.

The alternative would have been using a vacation day to drive, sit in a waiting room and then try to drive home with a swollen, bleeding and possibly wailing-in-pain kid.

“The girls can handle this one just fine themselves,” we agreed.

I mean, aside from the convenience there is also a certain X-factor involved, namely that I am squeamish and, if I were in charge of getting the patient home from the surgery, there was a 70 per cent or so chance that I might get weak, dizzy, lose consciousness and we would both be stranded. Emma and her swollen face and me in a woozy stupor would be quite a pair.

I’m a fainter. I admit it. And I have even fainted at the dentist. The hygienist decided I needed a lesson in flossing. I said I don’t floss because I might pass out. She asked me to hold up a mirror and watch while she flossed my teeth.

I watched for three seconds and the next thing I remember, several people were standing over me and it felt like they were concerned that I might be dead.

And I’m typing really fast because just reliving this moment is making me quite light-headed. I’m going to just take a quick break and maybe get some fresh air ...

... OK. Feeling a little better.

So, to recap, for some very good reasons (my sensitivity to dental work) and some very bad reasons (my sensitivity to using vacation days for dental work), we decided the girls could manage this just fine.

They set out for the dental surgery. All was well. Then the instant messages started. And I promise, other than punctuation and profanity, these are unedited. “She is making a ruckus in there.” That was the first text from big sister, Jessica.

“She just like screamed out loud, ‘Ow!’ and now they are saying, “Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma.”

Emma is supposed to be unconscious. When someone is trying to remove your wisdom teeth, unconscious is where you want to be.

“Sounded like she tried to get up,” writes Jessica, adding, for some reason, “LOL.”

I feel like LOL gets misused a lot. I mean, it’s supposed to mean, “laughing out loud,” right?

After the LOL we got more messages. “Oh, they are saying a lot of ‘Emmas,’ again ... She’s yelling again.”

What is going on in there?

“I think she keeps passing back out, then waking up to yell at them, then passes back out.”

I was feeling pretty good about not being there but pretty bad about what was happening.

“Hahaha she was being rowdy and they couldn’t put her out,” Jessica tells us. Again, not sure it warrants a “Hahaha.”

The messages stopped because the dentist wasn’t going to be able to do his thing unless Jessica went in and held Emma’s hand, kept her calm or, failing that, pinned her down so she would stop yelling at and, allegedly, trying to bite the dentist.

Emma weighed in when she regained consciousness.

“I don’t remember any of this.”

And if I was there, I wouldn’t either.

Chuck Brown can be reached at brown.chuck@gmail.com.