Teeth

No photos for this post--the memory is gruesome enough.

Yesterday, Allie tripped on a flight on concrete steps at school, taking the full brunt of the fall on her mouth (having a 20-25 pound book bag on her back didn't help with the forward thrust). She gashed her lip, and her two upper front teeth need to be reconstructed.

The afternoon was spent in two different hospitals: the emergency room of one, and the oral surgery clinic of another to have her lip sewn up. As bad as it all is, here's what's good: she didn't break anything except her teeth; the whole event took 4 1/2 hours from fall to when we brought her to our house; our next door neighbor is a dentist who came over, checked her out, and promised to fast-track her as soon as her lip is healed enough; she just finished a two-week marathon of getting an independent study added to her schedule to maintain her full-time student status and thus continue to be covered by our health insurance.

She has a history of smacking her face/teeth into things, but that pretty much stopped once she got glasses and her lack of depth perception was dealt with. But we did have a couple of toddler-being-rushed-to-the-dentist incidents (no teeth lost) and there were several incidents in pre-school where she ran into playground equipment (pre-glasses). I hadn't seen her with the swollen cut lip in a long, long time, so it was an extra shock to the system, as I remembered all those other face smashes.

What a day.