Friday, August 31, 2007
The Hanging Tooth
Hey, Girls. Thanks for all your kind words regarding my little mini breakdown. I am feeling much better this morning.
Yesterday I woke determined that it would be a better day. My two oldest boys each had dental appointments, at different offices, at 10:30am. Great planning on my part. Luckily the offices were only a few blocks apart so it all worked out.
I don't think I ever told you all about Zach's (15) little accident. He and his Dad had gone down to the baseball field one Saturday afternoon, around a month ago, for some infield practice. I was out by the pool watching the other kids when about 30 minutes after they left, they reappeared.
My sweet husband comes up to me and says "We had a little incident". Here I am thinking something happened to the car. I ask if they are OK when I get a glimpse of my oldest son standing before me with blood all over his face. It seems the ball took a bad hop and hit Zach hard in the mouth, knocking out the two teeth next to his front tooth on the right side of his face.
Well, I freaked out. He had just gotten his braces off and now he had knocked out two of his teeth. They weren't actually all the way out, just hanging there by a thread.
I promptly call the orthodontist who actually picked up his cell phone on a Sunday afternoon. I was so impressed. He tells me to call his friend, the oral surgeon, and see what he thinks I should do. He gives me the name of his friend and I realize we know this family also. Our boys had gone to school together.
So, having their home number I call and leave a message. His wife calls me back really quick asking what the emergency is and what is wrong with Zach. I tell her the whole story which she relays to her husband, the oral surgeon, who's name is Art.
She tells me that Art would have me bring Zach over to the office but they were bowling....in MARYLAND. There sons play hockey and they had a tournament all the way across the country in Maryland. She was calling me from the bowling alley.
Art gets on the phone and tells me to have Zach put the teeth back into place (it seems once swelling sets in you cant get them back in) and to go to the Emergency room of the hospital about 30 miles away. Not the emergency room in our town. They don't have a good oral surgeon on call. Ain't that cute?
After I get off the phone with Art I realize I can't go the emergency room he told me to. I forgot we had switched to an HMO last January and I couldn't just go where ever I wanted. So, Dave decides to take him to the ER at our HMO. The doctor looks at him, and by then the teeth had set back in, and though there was some swelling, this doctor thought they were OK.
Our wonderful orthodontist calls us back that night to find out what had happened. I tell him what Art said and what we actually did. His office is closed in the morning but he wants to look at Zach himself (since Art couldn't) and make sure everything is really OK. He goes into his office Monday morning at 7:00am and Dave meets him their with Zach. He agrees that Zach did a really good job of placing the teeth back where they should be and they seemed to have attached back really well. He tells them the tooth may be dead so we need to get an x-ray asap to check on that. If it is he will need a root canal. If the tooth starts to hurt definitely go see the dentist.
Zach said the tooth felt fine and I put it on my "To Do" list to go and get the tooth x-rayed.
The only problem was that my child had a baseball tournament all week in another town and was never home for me to take him. After that we all just kind of forgot about it. Everything seemed to be OK.
Until the morning Zach came in to me and said that his tooth was really hurting. Had been hurting for a while. Whey didn't you tell me when it first started to hurt? I didn't want to go to the dentist. Great.
I call the dentist, who is on vacation. They tell me to take him right on over to the endodontist who will see him immediately. I take him in. He needs a root canal. Not only that, his tooth has now died, and is discolored. Just what we had been warned may happen if we didn't get it taken care of.
Thankfully, we have wonderful dental insurance which paid for his root canal 100%. The only problem was that his tooth was now brown, not white. The cost to make it white again was going to be $250.00. Ouch.
Does a boy really need to have white teeth? I mean who would really notice. Well, everyone. Hubby told me to go ahead an have it whitened.
This is why he had a dentist appointment yesterday. He was getting the whitening finished up. They drilled a hole in his tooth, but the bleaching solution in there, and then the tooth whitens from the inside out. Very interesting I thought.
Yesterday, they had to take the bleach out, and I then need to take him back to the regular dentist to get a filling in the tooth where they drilled the little hole for the bleach.
On our way home Zach is complaining to me about how much it hurt. How they shot fire into his mouth. On and on he went. I had no choice. I had to remind him that he would not have had to go through the bleaching process if he had just told me when his tooth first started to hurt. Also, I would have saved $250.00.
He didn't complain for the rest of the day.
I guess the point of this story is that while I was waiting for Zach to get finished I was thinking about how Blessed our family truly is. Even though we live in a town with over 200,000 people it still feels like a small town where people really care about each other.
From the Orthodontist who came in on his day off to check him, free of charge, to our friends who were willing to drop everything to check on our first born. If only they hadn't been thousands of miles away.
My family is healthy, we have good friends, a home to live in, and my husband has a good job that he loves. What more could I really ask for?
God has really been talking to me over the last few day's about my attitude and it hasn't been pretty.
So, today I am counting my many blessings, trying not to sweat the small stuff which really has no eternal consequence, and being the best servant of our Lord that I can possibly be.
Happy Friday!
Yesterday I woke determined that it would be a better day. My two oldest boys each had dental appointments, at different offices, at 10:30am. Great planning on my part. Luckily the offices were only a few blocks apart so it all worked out.
I don't think I ever told you all about Zach's (15) little accident. He and his Dad had gone down to the baseball field one Saturday afternoon, around a month ago, for some infield practice. I was out by the pool watching the other kids when about 30 minutes after they left, they reappeared.
My sweet husband comes up to me and says "We had a little incident". Here I am thinking something happened to the car. I ask if they are OK when I get a glimpse of my oldest son standing before me with blood all over his face. It seems the ball took a bad hop and hit Zach hard in the mouth, knocking out the two teeth next to his front tooth on the right side of his face.
Well, I freaked out. He had just gotten his braces off and now he had knocked out two of his teeth. They weren't actually all the way out, just hanging there by a thread.
I promptly call the orthodontist who actually picked up his cell phone on a Sunday afternoon. I was so impressed. He tells me to call his friend, the oral surgeon, and see what he thinks I should do. He gives me the name of his friend and I realize we know this family also. Our boys had gone to school together.
So, having their home number I call and leave a message. His wife calls me back really quick asking what the emergency is and what is wrong with Zach. I tell her the whole story which she relays to her husband, the oral surgeon, who's name is Art.
She tells me that Art would have me bring Zach over to the office but they were bowling....in MARYLAND. There sons play hockey and they had a tournament all the way across the country in Maryland. She was calling me from the bowling alley.
Art gets on the phone and tells me to have Zach put the teeth back into place (it seems once swelling sets in you cant get them back in) and to go to the Emergency room of the hospital about 30 miles away. Not the emergency room in our town. They don't have a good oral surgeon on call. Ain't that cute?
After I get off the phone with Art I realize I can't go the emergency room he told me to. I forgot we had switched to an HMO last January and I couldn't just go where ever I wanted. So, Dave decides to take him to the ER at our HMO. The doctor looks at him, and by then the teeth had set back in, and though there was some swelling, this doctor thought they were OK.
Our wonderful orthodontist calls us back that night to find out what had happened. I tell him what Art said and what we actually did. His office is closed in the morning but he wants to look at Zach himself (since Art couldn't) and make sure everything is really OK. He goes into his office Monday morning at 7:00am and Dave meets him their with Zach. He agrees that Zach did a really good job of placing the teeth back where they should be and they seemed to have attached back really well. He tells them the tooth may be dead so we need to get an x-ray asap to check on that. If it is he will need a root canal. If the tooth starts to hurt definitely go see the dentist.
Zach said the tooth felt fine and I put it on my "To Do" list to go and get the tooth x-rayed.
The only problem was that my child had a baseball tournament all week in another town and was never home for me to take him. After that we all just kind of forgot about it. Everything seemed to be OK.
Until the morning Zach came in to me and said that his tooth was really hurting. Had been hurting for a while. Whey didn't you tell me when it first started to hurt? I didn't want to go to the dentist. Great.
I call the dentist, who is on vacation. They tell me to take him right on over to the endodontist who will see him immediately. I take him in. He needs a root canal. Not only that, his tooth has now died, and is discolored. Just what we had been warned may happen if we didn't get it taken care of.
Thankfully, we have wonderful dental insurance which paid for his root canal 100%. The only problem was that his tooth was now brown, not white. The cost to make it white again was going to be $250.00. Ouch.
Does a boy really need to have white teeth? I mean who would really notice. Well, everyone. Hubby told me to go ahead an have it whitened.
This is why he had a dentist appointment yesterday. He was getting the whitening finished up. They drilled a hole in his tooth, but the bleaching solution in there, and then the tooth whitens from the inside out. Very interesting I thought.
Yesterday, they had to take the bleach out, and I then need to take him back to the regular dentist to get a filling in the tooth where they drilled the little hole for the bleach.
On our way home Zach is complaining to me about how much it hurt. How they shot fire into his mouth. On and on he went. I had no choice. I had to remind him that he would not have had to go through the bleaching process if he had just told me when his tooth first started to hurt. Also, I would have saved $250.00.
He didn't complain for the rest of the day.
I guess the point of this story is that while I was waiting for Zach to get finished I was thinking about how Blessed our family truly is. Even though we live in a town with over 200,000 people it still feels like a small town where people really care about each other.
From the Orthodontist who came in on his day off to check him, free of charge, to our friends who were willing to drop everything to check on our first born. If only they hadn't been thousands of miles away.
My family is healthy, we have good friends, a home to live in, and my husband has a good job that he loves. What more could I really ask for?
God has really been talking to me over the last few day's about my attitude and it hasn't been pretty.
So, today I am counting my many blessings, trying not to sweat the small stuff which really has no eternal consequence, and being the best servant of our Lord that I can possibly be.
Happy Friday!
5 Comments:
Oh sweet friend I HAVE BEEN THERE....one word TRAMPOLINE and my two youngest teeth. I freaked also.
I feel for you. I hear you on the attitude thing, you are not alone on that one either.
have a good weekend.
Oh, my! What an ordeal! I hope he doesn't have any more problems with the tooth/teeth!
I don't know if the saying "All's well that ends well" is applicable here but I am really happy that Zach still has his own teeth -- in place and the 'right color'.
Wow, I could feel all your emotions!! smile
I am so glad you are feeling better! It's funny how a difficult situation can sometimes help us to see the positive! I am glad it worked out well!
That is quite a story! That is so great that you have such contacts!
I hope the tooth heals fully now.
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