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April 21, 2003
4.21.03: Good Friday gone bad…
I can barely even bring myself to write about it. But I will. I think letting a few days pass between the “incident” and today helped. I don’t feel the need to pepper this entry with cuss words and some of the emotions (but not all) have dwindled. OK, enough already with the drama and suspense! What the heck happened? The short answer is this: Mitchell is now missing a front tooth. A tooth for God’s sake!! And how (exactly) did this happen?
Blood and guts is not my specialty…
It started out as a fine day. We slept in that morning and had breakfast with the kids. Jerry wanted to get the yard mowed and trim the trees. The kids and I were playing in the back yard. We came inside for a Kool-Aid break. I was pouring Kool-Aid, the kids were running around, chasing each other. Rachel asked if they could play upstairs in her room. Of course. She headed up the stairs and Mitch was scrambling to catch up with her. I was following behind them. Rachel waited for him on the first landing, and this is where he lost his footing. In his haste, his foot slipped off the stair and he landed with his mouth on the stairs. (We later found that he was carrying his small metal Thomas the train and may have slammed his mouth on this.) Regardless, he started screaming bloody murder and then blood started spurting all over the place. As their mother, I have come to recognize the sounds of my children’s various “cries.” I can distinguish a “fake” cry from a “whiny” cry from an “I’m tired” cry from an “I’m in serious pain” cry. This was a terrified cry, not one I have heard before. I scooped Mitch up and held him close. I raced into the kitchen, turned on the faucet, grabbed a towel, and held it to his mouth. I put a wet wash cloth inside his mouth, trying to see where the blood was coming from. I thought he might have bitten his tongue or bitten through his lip. All I could see is blood and more blood. I remember saying to Rachel, “what happened, what happened?” over and over, like this was going to help. What a stupid thing to say, especially because I was standing right there when it happened. And what was Rachel supposed to say? I told Rachel to run outside and get her dad. Jerry was outside in the midst of trimming branches from our trees. She tried going out the living room door, but it was locked. I kept saying, “just go, just go get your dad.” Meanwhile Mitch was crying and screaming and flailing his arms. No wonder. Jerry came inside and I told him Mitch fell going up the stairs. He just slipped. I was right there. Jerry took Mitch and he tried looking in his mouth. But we just couldn’t see the source. I went to the stairs to show Jerry where he had fallen. There was blood all over the stairs. I looked a little closer and ran my hand across the stair. What I found was Mitch’s front tooth. The entire tooth and root. OMG! When I realized that I had Mitch’s tooth in my hand, I screamed for Jerry to take a look at this. Then we looked at the gaping hole in his mouth and thought that his other front tooth was jammed up into the gum. Holy cow! (Again, blood and guts is not my specialty). I called the ER and explained what happened, I needed to know what to do, where to take him. To the ER? To the dentist? (And, don’t you just love the staff at the ER? Where do they go for their “poker face” training skills? I could have said I sawed off both of my legs, and I’m sure I would have received the same reaction, “that’s nice, come on in.” ) They said the ER was slow but steady, that we were welcome to come in or we could call our dentist. We decided that Mitch should go to the ER and Jerry suggested that he should take Mitch, while I stay at the house with Rachel. I called our dentist, who was off for the holiday. I insisted on an emergency page, and he called back to recommend that we take Mitch to a pedodontist (basically a dentist who specializes in children’s dental care and who has the necessary equipment to treat children). I tried calling Met Life for a referral, but couldn’t get a real person to answer the phone (don’t you just love voice mail hell on days like this!). I got online and searched for a pedodontist and found one just around the corner from the ER. I called but they were out. I called 5 or 6 more dentists, but they were all off for Good Friday. Then, I called our regular pediatrician (not normally open on Friday afternoons). They answered on the first ring. Dr. Goldberg came to the phone and said to put Mitch’s tooth in a glass of milk, to take him to a pedodontist if possible and get x-rays. I put in several pages, but no one returned my calls. I started at the top of the list again and after about 20 rings (aha!) the phone rolled over to another line. A nice lady answered the phone and I told her what happened. She said that her husband (Dr. Ginter) was a pedodontist, but he was not working today. He was out planting trees somewhere, but she gave me his cell number and added a good luck for good measure. I reached Dr. Ginter on his cell phone. He said he was at his office, right around the corner from the ER. He said to tell Jerry to bring Mitchell in right away, he would meet him at the office. Jerry was just leaving the ER when I called. He said that the ER couldn’t do anything for Mitch except give him an antibiotic. They could not x-ray Mitch’s mouth because they didn’t have the right size of equipment. However, they were quite happy to take our $100 deductible, and they recommended that Mitch see his regular dentist as soon as possible. Nice feeling of getting nowhere fast. I stayed with Jerry on the phone until he drove into the parking lot of Dr. Ginter’s office. Mitch was still crying and bleeding. Dr. G examined him and said that we basically lost the tooth. The lost tooth is the one right beside the large middle, upper tooth. The gums were traumatized since the tooth was ripped out from the root. (I am still wincing while I type this.) The tooth could be implanted, but the doctor did not recommend trying this. He said it was an elective surgery purely for cosmetic reasons and the risks were that we could permanently traumatize and damage the nerve root of the permanent tooth which will come in behind the lost tooth. If we traumatized the permanent tooth in any way, then we would lose it. He said the best thing to do is put that tooth in the baby book and wait for the permanent tooth to come in. He didn’t think the main big tooth was damaged, but if it changes color we will know the root nerve was damaged. Hopefully this will not happen. Mitch arrived home 3 hours later and immediately reached out to me. I had already cried in the shower and thought I had gotten it all out of my system. But seeing his blood-stained face and shirt made me lose it again. I realize it’s just part of life. But, now my kid is missing a front tooth. A tooth for God’s sake!! And the permanent tooth won’t come in until the second grade. Of course, I am just sick about this. Nice mother my kids have?! I know it's not my fault, but I still feel terrible. It's like I wanted to take a hammer to my own teeth and smash them as if that could somehow take back the 3 seconds where he fell and lost his tooth. It's just a mother's love. And sometimes that love includes feeling guilty about things even we cannot control.
As I told Mitch, “listen, little fellow, this is the perfect time to ask for a horse.” I swear, when my kids are sick or injured, I’d give them the moon if I thought it would ease their fears or their pain. And so would Jerry. I know that won’t work. He's on an antibiotic. His gums bleed when he is sleeping. You can't really tell the tooth is missing (yet). When some people smile, their whole mouth smiles and you can see all their teeth at once. Mitch doesn’t have that kind of smile. He smiles big, but you can’t see ALL of his teeth at once. It’s not noticeable. But, when I lie him down to change him, I see a big black hole in his mouth. It’s not like you look at him and see a black hole, like in the movies where a character is missing a tooth and has an obvious black hole “look.” It's a small black gap in his gums, filled with dried black blood. It's a hole where the tooth was rooted in his mouth. It just looks so WRONG.
Who knew the Tooth Fairy would visit on the same night as the Easter Bunny? And who knew the Tooth Fairy would visit Mitch before Rachel?
Easter fun…
And now, on to a much lighter and happier note: Easter. The kids lucked out in the Grandparents department. Packages arrived this week from Michigan and Pennsylvania stuffed with candy, toys, clothing, socks, cards, balloons, and cards full of love & kisses. It’s too bad that we live so far away. There’s nothing like going to your Grandma’s for lunch or going fishing with your Grandpa, or just swinging on the porch watching fireflies. We feel so blessed to come from loving families who express their love from across the miles in ways that mean so much to the children. Rachel gets so excited when she receives mail. You could mail her a sticker from Kroger and she would love it.
The weekend was not entirely down the toilet. I bathed Mitch and put him down for a nap, while Jerry finished trimming the trees. We had dinner and played with the kids. I think I went to bed at 9:30, I was mentally exhausted. Saturday, Jerry finished the lawn. Jerry and Rachel dyed Easter eggs while Mrs. Easter Bunny finally made it to Toys R Us to purchase the much coveted pink Barbie scooter. After both kids were in bed, Jerry and I got out the plastic Easter eggs and stuffed them with candy and small toys and trinkets for the kids. Matchbox cars for Mitch and necklaces, bracelets, and Polly Pocket accessories for Rachel. We filled their baskets and set them on the kitchen table with some small toys. Rachel was the first one up on Easter morning. She snuck downstairs and spied the pink scooter on the kitchen table. She ran up to our room to tell me she saw a scooter downstairs. I got dressed and came down and Jerry was coming in from the back yard. He had snuck outside to hide the Easter eggs before the kids came downstairs. The kids loved their baskets and toys. Mitch got a Matchbox suitcase on wheels and several cars to start his collection of Matchbox cars. Rachel was thrilled with her Barbie scooter. She got a set of knee, elbow, and wrist pads and they each got new play brooms. It’s the little things that so delight them!
We gave the kids empty baskets and let them loose in the back yard for the egg hunt. I followed them around with the video camera while Jerry helped Mitch along. Rachel raced around the yard scooping up the eggs, quickly filling her basket. Mitch was so funny. He would find an egg, shake it, and run with it into the playhouse. He would open it, pour the candy onto the stove, do a little “happy dance,” and then run and find another egg. He really liked the jelly beans. Even though there are only so many places you can hide the eggs, our Easter Bunny was creative in his haste to hide the eggs. He put some in the sand box, the playhouse, under the slide, and a few in the bushes. The Easter Bunny forgot to count the eggs this year, so we had no way of knowing if all the eggs were collected, but so what. We will eventually find them. It started to rain shortly after we came inside and rained most of the day. We had a nice meal of spiral ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, applesauce, and homemade bread. For dessert: double pastry peach cobbler, vanilla ice cream and strawberry pretzel salad.
Although we planned to call them, both sets of grandparents called us first. Jerry told his parents about Mitch’s lost tooth. We were surprised to learn that Jerry lost a tooth at about the same age as Mitch. My dad said, “well, I thought you had carpeting on your staircase,” Well, of course we do. And my mom offered advice on how to get the blood out of the carpeting. It just made me realize something I already knew. Accidents happen. It doesn’t matter who is watching them or who is not watching them. It happened right in front of my eyes on the carpeted staircase. My first instinct was to scoop him up and hold him tight. I couldn’t have cared less about the blood on my carpeting or our clothes. That all comes out in the wash, but the kids are irreplaceable. Just before bed, Jerry was bouncing Mitch off his chest on the sofa. Mitch was squealing in laughter as Jerry tickled him and hugged him. I overheard Jerry saying to Mitch, “between me and you, you are even cuter with your little gap tooth!”
Warmly,
Megan
http://www.babiesonline.com/babies/m/millimaki/
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