At first we thought maybe she was having an allergic reaction to the numbing medicine, but her breathing was fine and she was 'normal' so we figued maybe they gave her too much numbing medicine and maybe it would wear off. Meanwhile, I decided to call the dentists emergency hotline number anyhow.
I waited ALL night for someone to call me back, I called twice. Nope, no call. In the morning ty comes to wake me up and tells me she is even worse, it was blistered, pussing & oozing from the outerlip as well as just as swollen as it was the night before. Here we are now, 15 hours after her filling and we are still swollen! And yes, still no phone call from the emergency on call dentist.
I take her in to the ER and they tell us that it looks like some sort of burn or infection. To him, it was very hard to tell exactly what was going on, he diagnosed it as "Trauma to the lip". He said many things could have happened, either one of the chemicals/solvents they used could have burned her outer lip (hence, all the skin was gone from her outer lip & this explains the blisters, this was ty's thought all along) OR he thought maybe if they had her lip stretched it could have cracked and she might possibly have gotten an infection. (explaining maybe why the puss was there) He examined everything and said it didn't look like a bite since there were no lacerations and it didn't look like an object hurt her. He put her on antibiotics right away and advised us to go back to the dentist and ask them what happened. Which we did.
Obviously, the dentists said this is 'normal' and said alexa just bit herself. But it's obvious that couldn't even happen, not where her blisters were. She was blistered, not bitten! Serisously, this is NORMAL??? They were absolutely rude & didn't seem to care much. As a mom, I felt completely useless in helping her feel better. Nothing I could do would make it better, but I will learn from this experience & I will research more about the people who will have contact with my kids. And, to make it even worse, Alexa said the Dr poked her in the cheek with the tooth scraping instrament to get her to turn her head...Nice Practicing Dr!
Your child almost certainly chewed the area or continued rubbing their face. There doesn't have to be any laceration, because the bites need not be hard enough to lacerate. Simply mulling around on the lip will cause it to swell. The reason it is common is because kids are terrible at following post-op instructions. It is highly unlikely that it is an allergic reaction since it is only on one side. The dry skin sloughing off from swelling would obviously since it is inelastic. I know it seems dramatic, but once your child is on ibuprofen and antibiotics, there is literally nothing left to do, except get your child to comply with leaving the area alone. ER doctors know virtually nothing of dentistry, so that was not a reliable source.
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