Avleigh's Journey

First and foremost Avleigh is doing wonderful! A year ago I honestly wasn’t sure how long she would have with us. She is now happier than ever! Nether-less she also has been having a lot going on medically. Over the last few months I have been doing a lot of research in learning new diagnosis and procedures that will provide her with the best quality of life possible. I’ll start off with the procedure that started it all.

Two years ago Avleigh had an accident where her wheelchair flipped forward damaging her two front teeth. We knew they were damaged but it never really became an issue until a few months ago. We noticed an abscess that was forming on her gums right above one of the damaged teeth. We took her to her dentist at Children’s and they verified it was indeed an abscess from one tooth that the roots were beginning to decay. Now we have to remove this tooth in order to ensure the infection does not spread.

I felt absolutely terrible. For one, she was in my care when the accident happened. Her wheel of her chair was not locked all the way and when I went to close the house door she rolled down the slope of the driveway causing the chair to flip forward. At the time of the accident it took me the longest time to get over the guilty feelings and here we are again pulling up those feeling again. Not only that, but she is only 4 years old! Her permanent tooth will not be ready to come out for a few more years. Now I know it’s cute when a child has their first missing tooth, but this is for 3-4 years! Besides my uneasy feels and there is another issue… it has never been approved for her to be under local anesthesia. They looked at me like I was a crazy lady when I wouldn’t schedule the procedure without finding out all the whys and get the proper approval to administer local anesthesia before proceeding. I was then instructed to watch the abscess very carefully and to text a picture with any changes to the dentist. We watched it very close until it finally went away on it’s own giving us a little more time to do our homework.

Now, we all know things happen for a reason. We may not always understand the whys at the time it is happening but there is always a good reason. I followed my gut feeling on this situation and boy am I glad that I did! In the meantime of Children’s doing their research on how to safely proceed was when we discovered that Avleigh has Von Willebrands disease. I know we talked briefly about this diagnosis in other blogs, so I won’t harp on it too much here. The point is that if I hadn’t followed my instincts and asked more questions then we would have discovered the disease during one of the most risky procedures for a blood disease patient.

We left off with waiting on a plan for her Von Willebrands. Needed to determine the type and have the medication on hand before proceeding. In the meantime, we monitor and we wait for the moment the tooth fairy can make her grand appearance.