Saturday, February 19, 2005

Heartbreaking...

I hate days that end like this one...

Tonight, as Stacey and I were putting Kailyn (2 1/2 years old now) down for bed, she was incredibly wound up. So wound up, in fact, that she leapt over my leg (I was sitting on the floor) from the middle of the room towards her bed and promptly smacked her face down on the metal rail that connects the headboard to the footboard (ironically, it's only exposed b/c of the 'safety rail' that keeps her from falling out of the bed at night).

Anyway, the next few minutes were a blur of much screaming, much blood, and a lot of confusion as we tried to figure out how exactly she was hurt. My initial thought was that she had busted her gums open. Why not...it's happened before.

Unfortunately, no...that wasn't it. Once we finally got her mouth open and could look past the insane amount of blood (mouth sores tend to bleed a lot, eh?), we noticed that one of her teeth was pushed backwards. -SHUDDER- I have to confess I have a tooth phobia (fear of losing teeth, breaking teeth...to the point that I've had nightmares about it). So when I stared at the 'bent' and bloody tooth in my little daughter's mouth, I nearly vomited. And since she was jumping over my leg when it happened, I also felt very responsible...more on that in a bit... Apparently, she'd hit that tooth dead-on with the thin edge of the metal rail. My teeth hurt just thinking about it...

Anyway, the next hour continued at a blur. Though our supposedly wonderful pediatric dentist office in Madison is supposed to have a 24/7 emergency service, no one EVER picked up after nearly 20-25 attempts at calling them (between 11:00 p.m. and...now, 2:20 a.m.). Makes we want a new dentist NOW. Left with little recourse, we packed Kailyn up and carted her off to the ER at 11:30 p.m. After much waiting, a lot more crying, and that nagging uncertaintly of how this would all work out, all the doc on duty would do for her was prescribe some Lortab and send her on the way...with instructions to see a dentist ASAP. Great...no dentist offices are usually open on Saturdays. Goobers.

So now, Stacey and Kailyn are downstairs...at least attempting to go to sleep in our bed. I hope the Lortab knocks her out. Kailyn can only eat soft foods for a while, but she doesn't want remove this damp paper towel from her mouth. Every time she tries, she cries as the loosened, displaced tooth moves and (obviously) causes her pain.

And I'm sick to my stomach...from seeing my daughter's discomfort to my own feeling of 'responsibility' for what happened to the overall 'unfinished' way this all feels right now. Sure, it wasn't my fault. I was just sitting there. But I feel responsible because I'd already told my kid good night, and Stacey had already taken her downstairs. But...stupid me...I'd decided to go downstairs and see her one more time (I love being able to be there when she crawls in her new bed). Had I not done that, she probably would've just gone to bed without incident. But, no...

Again, not my fault. But I hate how those small decisions in our lives can have such stupid consequences, even when they're GOOD decisions.

-Sigh-

Keep our little girl in your prayers as she deals with this. And keep her parents (me and Stacey) in there, too, since we're freakin' out...

Hopefully, we can track down a dentist tomorrow who can realign or remove or...whatever...the tooth.

1 Comments:

Blogger THE J Mo said...

OUCH!!! Oh man... I feel so bad for Kailyn. I know it would suck to have something like that happen to me. But the thing is, I would UNDERSTAND what is going on, how hard it is to find a dentist on a weekend and that in the meantime it would hurt like a MF.

Now in her case, she has all the pain but not the understanding. Good grief. Man o man.

11:19 AM  

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