Dental Visits with an Aspie

Oral sedation combined with a local anesthetic can result in a sensory-sensitive child melting down after a dental procedure.

My son, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, had an interesting dental visit yesterday. He has fantastic teeth, except for one. The dentist was baffled that his first cavity was massive; the in-between the teeth cavity ended up being a tooth extraction for my son. The rest of his teeth look great and the dentist said that with a cavity of this caliber there are usually other problem teeth and called it an anomaly and a conundrum. That’s my son, a conundrum.

My son was given Versed, an oral sedative, to relax him prior to the laughing gas and local anesthetic. He was giddy prior to the procedure and was great until about 15 minutes after the procedure was over. Then the Versed started to wear off and he noticed the numb feeling in his lip, cheek, and tongue. That tingly feeling sent my sensory defensive son over the edge.

He started screaming, loud banshee-like screams and then hit, kicked, slapped, and head butted me. Mind you he was still quite floppy from the sedative but he was still hard to handle. For the next hour the dental assistants and the dentist himself would come in to help me distract him. This kind of reaction isn’t exactly uncommon with Versed but evidently my conundrum of a son was having a more dramatic response.

Once we were dismissed I spent the next two hours working on keeping him distracted. When it was all said and done he wrote me a very sweet letter that said “I love you Mommy, sorry for attacking you.” My heart just swelled with love for my sweet little boy as I explained to him that he wasn’t attacking me, the medicine was.