injury

So, here’s what happened on Father’s Day. Mostly we had a pretty good day. Eliot and I made pancakes for Dad, and gave him a new grill. We did a little shopping that afternoon – bought a few new movies and hit the Old Navy for some new clothes. When we got home, we hit a snag.
Eliot was not rough-housing or anything, but he just tripped on the edge of the rug and fell, face-first into the corner of the coffee table. Upon inspection, I could see that he had bent his right, front, upper tooth almost completely backward. His lip started to swell from the cut on the inside. We called the pediatrician and they said that he could probably wait until the next morning to see the dentist. He licked a spoonful of peanut butter for dinner, took some ibuprofen and went to bed.
The next morning, he was almost unrecognizable. His upper lip had swollen so big that it hung completely over his bottom lip. He couldn’t talk or eat at all. He just laid in bed next to me with silent tears running down the side of his face. The earliest appointment I could get with the dentist was 10:00. We were there by 9:30.
Sure enough, the tooth had to be pulled. Actually, Dr. Carr gave me the option of trying to re-set the tooth, but that would have meant two weeks on a soft diet and even then, it might not work and have to be pulled anyway. I figured, it’s a baby tooth, so let’s just do it! Eliot was absolutely wonderful! He laid there perfectly still and let them work on his mouth. He looked like he was scared to death. But I tried to keep holding his hand and talking to him and smiling at him.
Of course, they numbed the surface of his gums first, then Novocained him up real good. Then they pulled the tooth right on out. However, once his mouth was numb and we could get a good look at the injury on the inside of his lip, it became pretty obvious that it was beginning to get infected (yucky mouth germs, and of course, he hadn’t brushed his teeth since the previous morning). In hindsight, I probably should have taken him to the ER Sunday night to get stitches. But at the time I was much more concerned about the tooth. It turned out, though, that the lip injury was much worse than the tooth injury. Dr. Carr put him on antibiotics. It took two full days for the swelling to go down much at all. The first day he pretty much laid on the sofa licking peanut butter and dozing off and on. The second day he was feeling a little better, but still very swollen. At least he was talking and eating a few more things (bananas, yogurt, egg). He went back to school on Wednesday, but it was another two days for the swelling to go away completely. But by Friday, he was completely back to his old self, minus one tooth (two if you count the one he lost the old-fashioned way).