Jenna left the house at 5:15 on Wednesday. I told her she could stay out for an hour and
gave her my phone so that she would have it when the alarm went off.
She returned home at 5:30 and I told
her she could continue to play for 15 more minutes. Not even two minutes passed before I heard
her wailing. Had we been prepared for disaster, both of us would have made
certain she had stayed in.
It happened so quickly, she's
uncertain of just how it happened.
evidently she took some kind of fall on her bike in which her mouth was gruffly
introduced to the asphalt at high speed.
She came in the house with her mouth bleeding. Roland and I both thought that the tooth had
broken.
I gave her a wet cloth to hold over
her mouth. She was crying, coughing, disheartened
with the sudden events that disrupted our plans for taking her to the
church.
Roland was immediately on the phone
in hopes to find an emergency dentist while I said a prayer. I felt inspired to take her to the activity
anyway. But Roland seemed more
interested on relying on his own instinct.
I called a counselor in the young
women's to explain or situation and let her know that Jenna would not be
attending. I then called her
"Ma" to ask if she knew of any dentists in the stake. I left a message on the voicemail of the
first one. I did get a hold of the
second dentist - who sounded a bit put off by my questions.
By the time the blood stopped, the
damage didn't appear to be as bad as we had suspected. Her right front tooth was pushed out of
alignment. Actually, it appears that her
lip got the worst of it. As I was explaining this to the dentist, he indicated
that nothing could be done about the tooth itself right then, but that I could
meet with him the next morning.
Meanwhile he recommended IB Profin and Tylenol.
Roland frantically continued to call
numbers for dental and the insurance company while I was making calls to ward
and stake members for assistance. At
least I was talking to actual humans and not just copying down numbers given by
a machine.
Roland was finally contacted by
someone on the other end of the supposed emergency number. Roland gave a similar description as I had
with the dentist in Roseburg - but the caller at Roland's end was actually able
to call in a prescription for antibiotics for Jenna to take in the meantime.
While Roland was out picking up
Jenna's prescription, I received a phone call from the first dentist I had
tried contact. He was calling from the
stake center in Roseburg - where Jenna would have been if we had gone with my
initial thought - the one that I'm guessing God must have planted. She had already missed the activity by the
time Roland had returned - or would have by the time he got her to Roseburg.
I sent an email to all of her
teachers to let them know that Jenna would be staying home yesterday - hoping
we'd be able to get her into the dentist.
She was actually upset with us for having made her miss school. I was willing to take her in late as the
soonest that we get her into the dentist was 10:20, but Roland said it wouldn't
be worth having her go for less than two hours just to check her out
again.
All of the staff was impressed with
how well Jenna handled herself. I too am
pleased with her overall behavior. She didn't try to milk it. She was very brave about having the dentist
touching sensitive parts inside of her mouth.
The dentist put on a temporary brace and explained that the root may
heal and not be disjointed after all.
But there's also a chance that her tooth could start to darken, in which
she'll have to have a root canal
Jenna no longer has the perfect
teeth she did 18 months ago. I don't
know if I've ever had perfect teeth. I
had chipped my front tooth when I played on the monkey bars. Same blood.
Same drama. I lived with a
chipped tooth for many years. Before my
mission, my dentist sawed my two front teeth away and gave me porcelain
ones. I cried when he let me look in the
mirror.
Jenna has had quite a healthy
attitude. He philosophy: "God is good, and he'll help me through
this . . . so why should I worry?"
Good for her!
No comments:
Post a Comment