Back on Superbowl Sunday, about 30 minutes prior to kickoff, Martin did a face plant in the middle of the family room and broke one of his upper front teeth. It didn’t bleed much and he was fine after a few minutes. That week we took him to see his dentist who then referred us to a specialist. The specialist took some xrays and recommended that we do a root canal to reduce the risk of it abscessing. Since (at the time) he was under 2 years old, it require that he be put under general anesthesia at a hospital for the procedure. We scheduled it for the first week in May. Two things happened during this period.

The first was that we caught a lot of grief from some friends and family for performing a root canal on a two year old. This upset us because we obviously didn’t *want* to do this, but believed it was the right thing to do. More on this later.

The second thing that happened was with the insurance company. Since it had to be performed in a hospital, the procedure spanned both medical and dental insurance with the medical responsible for the hospital stay and anesthesia. Two days before the surgery, we still had not received approval from the insurance company, but they swore that it would be done. The day before surgery, we still didn’t have approval and had to cancel the surgery. We fought from the beginning of May until the end of July with the insurance company medical review group. They insisted that they needed to see *pre* accident xrays. Since he was only two, there weren’t any *pre* accident xrays. Yet they insisted that they were required. I even ended up in an argument with a customer service representative with him insisting that “their medical specialists knew what the were doing!” We offered them a copy of the ultrasound before he was born since that was all we had. They didn’t find it amusing. After *many* phone calls and arguments and beating on them from the Honeywell side, I’m glad to say we finally received approval.

That brings us to this morning. Martinah and I awoke at 4:30 am to take Martin to the hospital by 6:00 am where we filled out a bunch of paperwork and answered a lot of questions. The staff (from the nurses to the doctors and even other employees) was EXCELLENT! They prepared us for everything including the fact that he would cry before he went into surgery and after he returned. Still, when they took him away, it was hard and Martinah cried. About 45 minutes later, the doctor came out and told us that everything had gone well. Remember the part about catching grief that I mentioned earlier? It turns out that his tooth was badly abscessed and he could have lost the tooth if we hadn’t performed the procedure. For all the doubters. Pttth!

Anyway, he was a trooper and was asking for ice cream ten minutes after surgery. Of course he couldn’t have any till later, but that had to be the hardest earned, best tasting chocolate ice cream in the world!