Meet Me at the Children's Hospital
The sentence that is every parent's biggest fear.
I was almost finished my shift uber-ing when I get the call:
It’s BW: The child has had an accident and they are off to the children’s hospital.
I couldn’t really talk because I had somebody in the back seat, and I was 1/4 mile down the road from the drop off so I got the passenger delivered and then called BW back to find out what was going on
They had just got home from a birthday party and BW went inside, and the child stayed outside to play on her scooter.
And apparently seconds later: screaming. And blood. Lots of blood. She had fallen off the scooter and face planted teeth first onto the driveway.
BW made the decision to take her to the children’s hospital
I boogie it to the hospital. I may have broken a few traffic laws to get there ASAP.
We get triaged, and they have a cursory look and yup, there’s a loose front tooth.
Crap.
Motrin is prescribed and given. She’s not in too much pain, so that’s good.
Then we get to see an actual doctor who has a look and then calls the dentist on call.
The doc comes back and takes a photo with her personal phone to send to the dentist at home. I’m no lawyer but I am sure there’s a few HIPAA laws broken there, but whatever.
BW and I take turns going to the Panera to get some dinner without her seeing. (it’s a fancy hospital) and when it’s my turn they are upstairs in the X-Ray and seeing the dentist.
The result?
Yes, the tooth is loose. It’s also fractured.
But…
Apparently it was fractured before. How or when we have no idea, but she did fall on her face when she was a toddler where we ended up at the hospital, but we would have noticed a loose tooth. We’ve been to the dentist with her multiple times and they haven’t said anything either.
The decision was made to leave well enough alone and hope there’s new bone growth to support the new fracture as there’s already been bone growth for the missed fracture so we are hoping for a repeat performance.
We go to the dentist on Friday anyway, and they may decide to pull it. We don’t know yet. But as it stands now she left with the same amount of teeth she went in with and that’s a good thing.
The Good news? When you bonk your teeth you get a lemon popsicle on the way out.
Speaking of Popsicles - she’s on a soft foods diet for 2 weeks and of course, no more scooter or bikes or rough play also for a few weeks.
There’s a very good possibility her ice cream intake might go up for the next 2 weeks, and that’s not being contested at all by the child.
Huh.
Hopefully in a few weeks the tooth will have repaired itself for the most part and she can get finished school and have an accident free summer like we are planning on.
Please, no more hospital visits.
They are too scary for Dads (and Moms too).