Tooth Trauma

Saturday night was girls' night at Lynette's, and I looked forward to it all week.  I packed up my crafts and started to get ready to go.  The kids asked if they could walk across the street (to my in-laws', where Daddy was waiting for them to come eat dinner) and I said that they sure could.  

A few minutes later Alif knocked at the bathroom door and said, "Your son smashed his mouth.  Can you come help him?"  I rolled my eyes and said, "I'm in the bathroom, Alif.  Can you help him?"  I gathered a wet washcloth and headed out to the dining room to see what was going on, expecting to see a bunch of blood trailing from a busted lip.  I'm very experienced in busted lips.  They hardly even faze me.

But there was no blood.  There was Malachi, sitting calmly in a dining room chair with his hand covering his mouth.  Alif was sitting in another chair, facing Malachi directly.  He said, "Show your Mom your mouth."  Oh dear, please not his teeth.  Please not his . . . oh.  Oh no.

Ohhhh NO.  Thankfully, I kept myself calm.  I asked if it hurt and he said it hurt a little bit.  I told him I'd put a call in to the dentist and then give him some medicine.  I reached the dentist's office's answering service, gave them our information, and they said a dentist would be calling me shortly.  I gave Malachi some Motrin and suggested he put on a movie to keep his mind off things while we waited for the dentist to call back.  I texted Lynette to tell her what was going on, and marveled that Malachi wasn't crying.  Meanwhile, Alif gathered the tooth fragments and put them in milk.

In the next hour and a half, there was a lot of telephone and Facebook drama, but it basically boiled down to:
~my own dentist was completely unwilling to do anything except send us to the ER and/or call in a prescription.  Fury ensued.
~friends recommended a local pediatric dentist
~talked to said dentist.  Personally.  Immediately, the first time I called.
~told the dentist what had happened to the tooth, and also that Malachi was scheduled to leave for camp the next morning.
~Mr. Wonderful agreed to meet us at his office in 20 minutes

Dr. S was absolutely amazing.  He knew exactly how to relate to Malachi.  He understood the importance of a 7th grader's church camp experience and how sucky-suckfest it would be to go to camp with a tooth broken half off.  He *fixed the tooth*.  Because the root was showing, he had to do a pulpotomy, and because Daddy was a genius, he was able to use part of Malachi's tooth fragments to fix the tooth. 

It doesn't look perfect, but look!  He has both front teeth!  He wasn't in pain at all on Sunday morning and was so happy to be able to go to camp withOUT a broken front tooth.  Of course there were explicit instructions to not bite into anything hard, which I basically translated as just don't bite into anything.  I told him to cut things up and eat them that way rather than risk something happening to that tooth while he's at camp.

So.  Broken teeth are a huge bummer, awesome dentists are a huge blessing, and I am one thankful Mommy - that it wasn't worse than it was and that in the end he received some really great care.  By the way, Dr. S's office called first thing to check on Malachi.  My own dentist's office?  Not so much.