I took my nine-year-old son to the dentist. There was no way I could have anticipated his behavior. We spoke about how we were going to the dentist, and the treatment, as you know, is not very pleasant. We spoke about the chair that moves up and down, about the smells and the sounds, and about the “tractor” that would enter his mouth. We explained how he would need to open his mouth very wide, and more.
We spoke of many things, but I forgot to mention the shot that the dentist would administer in order to numb his mouth.
I don’t know if it would have helped if we’d have remembered. When my son saw the needle he got all riled up. No way was he willing to get this shot. No way. It would hurt too much.
The more I tried to calm him down, the wilder he became, and the dentist said he couldn’t treat him. We left without his being treated, and with no other solution in sight. We were very confused. How would we take care of his teeth this way? In the meantime, we did nothing.
A while passed, and my son began to look very tired. We went to a doctor, who did some testing, and we discovered he had a certain illness. May Hashem send him a refuah sheleimah.
Now we understood that several months earlier, when we visited the dentist, the illness had already been present in his body, and the shot was liable to endanger his life! His strange behavior was in fact a true hatzalah. Had he sat nicely and gotten his treatment, who knows if there would have been a boy to treat later on!
While Hashem tested us with an illness, and we would have to undergo all its stages before he would hopefully be cured, we simultaneously see the tremendous hashgachah pratis and how Hashem safeguarded our child from harm.
