Anyways, I had just turned the last corner and our house was just a block away when my phone rang. Getting it out of my pocket and looking at it, the screen said Longfellow.....uh oh , the girls school. At first I didn't really think anything about it, because I get a phone call from the school, for one reason or another, probably once a week.
So, I answer it, expecting the front desk lady or maybe Zo's teacher reaching out for a volunteer. No, it was the school nurse, and the first words out of her mouth were,
"Hi Meagan, it's Leah, the nurse, it's not an emergency BUT.....,"
I knew then and there, that it probably WAS an emergency.
Sure enough, at morning recess, Zo 'forgot' the balance beam at their school was slick, so she hopped on up and slipped and boom- fell on her face, putting her front two teeth through her bottom lip (we thought) and completely breaking the front teeth.
I call her dad to go get her, he lives right by the school and tell him I will meet them at his house. About 10 minutes later I get a call from him to meet them at the dentist office. Apparently he called them and they wanted to see her ASAP.
Basically we had 2 options:
A) She hit the nerve and killed her two front teeth. Which at her age was the most likely option. Apparently, the dentist said when children have adult teeth, the roots in those adult teeth are usually just huge. If this was the case, her two front teeth would have to be pulled and fake teeth put in basically.
or
B) She missed the nerve, we repair her two front teeth by putting composites on them, and then once she reaches physical maturity we put veneers on them.
That's it. Those were the only two choices, and luckily sweet little Zo lucked out and it was option B, but it was soooo close!!! The dentist said it is extremely rare for her to do what she did and completely miss the nerve, but somehow she did it.
So we are not completely in the clear yet, apparently within the next 3-4 years the tooth can still die just from the trauma itself and apparently there is no way to tell right now if that's gonna happen or not, but she has a lot in her favor: there was no pupal material exposed, she wasn't in a ton of pain (they offered to numb her due to the possibility of the extreme cold sensation, but she declined), and the fact that she is young. I guess teeth like to repair themselves while you're young according to the doc. So we just hope for the best.
They immediately put the composites on and basically told her that from this point forward, she can no longer bite into anything hard....an apple, corn on the cob, etc-for the rest of her life. Basically it's such a large amount of restoration on those teeth, especially the one, that she will have to baby them forever. The composites will have to be redone a few times just to adjust for coloring, size, etc, so this will be an on going process. My poor baby, but she is in the best spirits and was more impressed with her lisp (while she was missing her teeth) than anything else.
The entire dental staff was awesome and she walked out of there loaded with gitfts: free Texas Roadhouse meals, 5 free games of bowling, and like 8 free cups of frozen custard from Freddys. I told her to choose one and Dr.Grant told her to take them all. It was insane, but he has a daughter that is exactly Zo's age, and he was like, 'I just keep seeing Ally (his daughter) laying here!' Such a nice guy!
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| her x-rays. You can see how close she got to the nerve on that one tooth |
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| working their magic |
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| composites are on, but not shaped or shaved down |
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| and here she is with a brand new smile! |
