Living with my greatest fear.

~ Chapter 49 ~

Grant's POV:

"Alright, E, do you just want to have a seat for me? We'll take this at your pace."

Slowly, Ellie takes a seat and leans back into the chair.

"Good girl, princess. I'm going to lean the chair back, okay? As you're going down, I'm going to put my gloves and mask on, okay?"

"Mhm.."

"Just keep taking those deep breaths and you'll be fine."

I sort everything out and then roll under Ellie's head.

"Can you open as wide as you can, E? I'm just going to have a look at your gums and then all of your teeth and then I'll focus on your wisdom teeth, yeah?"

She nods.

As I'm looking at her gums, I can tell that she has early gingivitis. Her gums are red and a little swollen and she's told me that her gums occasionally bleed when she brushes them.

"E, have you been flossing recently?"

She shakes her head and her cheeks flush red. I figured she probably wouldn't if her teeth hurt because of her gums.

"Okay, I'm just going to floss them now, alright? Don't worry, E, I'm not mad at you for not flossing. It might hurt a little bit, but that's just your gums."

I begin to floss her teeth, and, as I expected, her gums do bleed, but I use some cotton swabs to get the blood.

I carry on with the rest of her check-up and come to the conclusion that we're going to have to manage her gums in some way and I'll explain that to her later and also that I think she needs some sort of orthodontic treatment; I'll talk to her and Dan tomorrow.

"Alright, E," I say, putting the chair back up to the normal position, "You have early gingivitis, so I'll explain management things for that and also, I think we should have a talk with Dan tomorrow, as I think you may need to have some treatment from him."

"Oh, okay..What about the gingivitis thing?"

"Right so, basically, gingivitis is where the gums are red, sometimes swollen, and sore. It's pretty common, so don't worry about it, I can get it all sorted for you. It's good that we found it soon, because it can lead to not very nice things, but we don't have to worry about that, okay?"

"Okay...but how do you get rid of it?"

"So, generally the advice I give to my patients is about how to keep your teeth clean; obviously to stop smoking but you don't so that's fine; and also to get your teeth cleaned by a hygienist."

"Oh..I don't want someone else seeing it...or just looking anyways..." Ellie responds, shakily.

"Princess, don't worry. We can start with just some extra cleaning and stuff at home, and then if it doesn't get any better then we can see James because he's a qualified hygienist, okay?"

"Mhm..What about Dan?"

"Okay, so I think you could benefit from seeing him and I don't want you in any pain. Having seen him, he may show you some other things that may also allow you to look after your teeth and gums a little better, okay? It might enable you to get to your gums easier, so they aren't so red and inflamed, yeah?"

Ellie nods.

"Can we go now?" She says, quietly.

"Yeah, let me just type some stuff into your notes..."

I just quickly add 'Ellie has had trouble flossing recently, plaque evident on examination today, gingivitis diagnosis and management discussed, to review periodically.'

"Let's go, E. I need to go home and make your account for the rest of the week!"

*AT HOME*

We walk into the house and go into our rooms to get changed into something more comfy and then we both go downstairs to sit at the island in the kitchen.

"Do you want to help me sort your account out for this week?"

"Yeah, I like this bit, it was quite fun," Ellie says, smiling.

"I'm glad, E," I open my laptop and get to the right page, "So, basically, I'm going to set your account up like everyone else's but just with limited access to patient files because there's loads of paperwork you'd have to do for me to let you have access to the same stuff I do. I can sort that out later if you end up having a little part time job here or something because then you'd be an employee."

"Okay, so I can just do the same stuff that I did today?"

"Yeah, I think so, I don't know what you did with Emily, but most probably, yeah."

I start telling her how all of it works.