Thunk! *ouch*

This morning, I received one of those calls that I dread. My son had been hurt at school.

Of course, when I first heard that my sixth grader had been hurt, the most drastic things raced through my mind. A stray bullet from a drive-by shooting had hit him! He had been trying to save the life of a poor kindergartener and had been crushed by the runaway bus! He hadn't quite been able to get out of the way of the stampeding herd of zoo animals!

But then, more rational, more calm thoughts began to prevail and I heard the teacher saying something about a metal gate and his mouth. HIS MOUTH?? I'm spending THOUSANDS of dollars on orthodontics for that mouth! NOT his MOUTH!! (See? Much more rational thoughts.)

Fortunately, I work only minutes away from the school, so I ran to the car and sped (It's hard not to speed when your child has been hurt. Trust me.) to the school. I found him in the office with an icepack and some wet paper towels that were red with blood.

After checking him out of the school, I called the dentist. I am, after all, paying thousands of dollars for orthodontics, so I wanted to make sure that there was no permanent damage!

Thoughts that went through my mind during my conversation with the dentist's office: Our dentist is out of town. GREAT! What do I do now? Oh! He has another dentist covering for him. Good. Dentists usually do that. How smart of them! WHAT?? The backup dentist is in PAYSON? That's 40 minutes' drive from here! What are they THINKING?? They have another dentist that is closer to me? Where is he? Hey idiot! Watch where you're driving! Sheesh. People shouldn't drive while using their cellular phones. Wait. I'm driving while using my cellular phone. BUT THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!!!

While we were driving to the dentist's office, he clarified what had happened. There are large, metal gates at the school that keep cars from driving onto the playground. Today, they weren't locked, and some kids were playing a game. A child would sit on the end of the gate, and several others would push the gate as fast as they could, trying to get the "rider" to fall off. My son was watching this game on one gate, and as he watched, he drifted into the path of the second gate. Thunk! *ouch*

The backup dentist to the backup dentist was very nice. They rushed my son right in and checked out his teeth. The weren't wiggly. Not wiggly is definately good when you're dealing with teeth. (Unless you're my younger son, in which case, why, oh WHY can't he EVER have wiggly teeth?? ) His gums were a bloody, pulpy, bruised mess, and they're going to hurt for a few days. Then they took x-rays to make sure that there was nothing wrong with the teeth below the gumline.

The first viewing of the x-rays didn't show anything major wrong, but upon closer inspection, the dentist saw a tiny shadow of something that might possibly be a small crack in one of the teeth. So my son might end up losing one of his teeth, or everything may be just fine. They might be perfectly okay until the next phase of the orthodontic treatment, and then the tooth might become a problem. But there's nothing we can do about it now. We just have to wait and see.

My poor son was in tears when we left the dentist's office. He doesn't want one of his teeth to turn black and die, which is what the dentist said may happen. The only consolation I could give him was to tell him that because it was such a faint thing on the x-ray, the chances are good that his tooth will be just fine. We also discussed things we could do in case it's not, and he seemed to be okay with that.

I'm not okay with that. As I've written before, I'd rather have crap like this happen to ME instead of having it happen to my kids. Sometimes, it's hard to say "stuff like that happens," or "it's just part of life."

Right now, he's back at school, and even seemed happy and optimistic about things. That's one of the many, MANY things I love about my son!