Going out with a bang

2020, that is. I'm almost afraid to wake up tomorrow to see what happens on the very last day, because certainly, dealing with a child who knocked out their front tooth was not on my 2020 bingo card. Before we get to the tooth, I have to set the stage and begin with last night. Bear with me, we'll get to the tooth, I promise.

The only thing TM really wanted for Christmas was a winter camping trip with J. J. likes camping and doesn't mind winter camping, so the two of them planned for an overnight trip last night. This would be before the weather forecast came out. It turns out that yesterday late afternoon brought our first real winter storm and the accompanying storm. If you enjoy winter camping, then snow just makes it better, so they loaded up and headed out. At least it wasn't horribly cold. By all accounts the trip was a success and was enjoyed by both parties.

Setting up camp at dusk in the snow

TM

The morning after

I'm told it was a little tricky to get out of the tent when it was covered in this much snow.

In the meantime, I was holding down the fort at home. R. does not feel safe when one of us is gone, so I had no idea what to expect. She was up a couple of times. The first was the beginning of behavior that has precipitated a trip to the ER, so I decided to give some of the rescue medicine. I was a little astonished that I was able to calm her and she went back to sleep in her bed. This is huge progress. Of course, instead of going back to sleep, I lay awake for quite a while listening hard, because why go back to sleep if you are just going to have to wake up again? Then I heard her again long around 5:30, but after a couple of cries all was quiet again and she slept through the night. When she woke up, she was complaining of her eye hurting (her usual aura for a non-epileptic seizure). I gave her some pain killer and had her sit on the couch, leaving instructions to H. to fix her an egg while I was out at the barn. Things seemed under control.

The next thing I know, I was about to take water out to the horses whom I had just put in the pasture when L. comes tearing out shouting that R. had a seizure and her tooth came out. After giving some instructions to the girls in the barn and telling L. to get the tooth in milk, I headed inside because this seemed like something I should go check on. When I got inside, D. was sitting by R. whose mouth was bleeding copiously and K. was working on wiping even more blood off the kitchen floor. It seems that at some point R. was walking across the kitchen floor when she had a seizure, falling to the floor, knocking out her front tooth. K. discovered her and was trying to help when D. came into the kitchen to see K. cradling R.'s mouth while K. tells D. to get Mommy because he thinks R. broke her jaw. Something was certainly very, very wrong. By the time I got inside, D. had found the tooth and was doing his best to clean up R. a bit. 

Now, we don't currently have a dentist. It took a while to find one and then that dentist went out of business due to Covid. Not only did I know I need to get R. to someone quickly, but first I had to figure out who that someone would be. Enter a good friend who responded immediately to my phone call and helped give me a name. The dentist could see us immediately, so off we went.

The first dentist and his office were fantastic. I'm happy to report we now have a new dentist. He wanted to send us to a specialist, though, because he didn't have nitrous and he knew the shots to get the Novocain into the gum would be extremely painful so he was unwilling to put her through that. When I mentioned her medical trauma he and his staff were incredibly understanding and patient. (Remember all that, you'll need it for later.) Let's call this office The Good Place. They went above and beyond, taking x-rays for which they didn't charge me and finding a specialist who had nitrous and could get us in. With an appointment made, we headed off. 

By this time, R. is pretty wigged out. She's already on the edge from her father being gone and having a seizure (which is always severely anxiety producing), she's been examined by one set of medical professionals in scrubs, is loaded back into the car which her mouth still aching, and ends up in the waiting room of another medical office. Unsurprisingly (to me), she then falls backwards in another seizure in the waiting room while I'm getting out the insurance cards. (Had I not been so distracted by the bleeding gaping hole in her mouth, I might have thought to give her the rescue medicine before we left home. I'm pretty sure I get a pass for not thinking about it.) 

Enter doctor number two. 

I'm on the floor soothing R. (because really, there's not a lot else you can do while someone is having a seizure), when a man is suddenly looming over us in surgical gown and headlamp which he hasn't bothered to turn off. He bends down and looks at R., shining that damn light right in her eyes and starts asking me questions. Questions which do not bode well for our future working relationship. Questions which tell me immediately that he has seen her facial difference and that is all he needs to know. I've been down this road so many times that I'm kind of quick at picking up on this phenomenon. 

R. eventually stops seizing and can hear me (while I'm trying to shield her eyes from the damn light), when Doctor Dearest continues his monologue of not knowing what to do. If I had known this was going to be a theme of his, I would have started counting exactly how many times he uttered it. In between his mutterings, I'm trying to explain what happened, why R. had a seizure, medical trauma, etc. It got so bad that I eventually had to say to Doctor Dearest that if he would be quiet and let me explain then he might understand something. He at least was quiet and let me speak a complete sentence. I'm pretty sure it did nothing for his overall understanding.

And then he asked me a couple of questions that should never, never, never come out of a medical professional's mouth: What is her functioning age and does it even matter if we fix it? 

Doctor Dearest is still alive. He even has all of his teeth and no black eye. Be impressed, because in those few seconds before I answered, Doctor Dearest was not in the best of shape inside my head. Clearly, we were not in The Good Place any longer, but had ended up in The Bad Place.

I insisted that it most certainly did matter that we fix the tooth and we were taken to a room. Before I realize what is happening... I mean I have signed no paperwork and no permissions for treatment yet... I'm realizing that they are injecting her gum with Novocain. WITHOUT NITROUS OXIDE WHICH IS THE WHOLE REASON WE ARE EVEN THERE. I'm a pretty darn experienced medical parent at this point and sometimes even we cannot see things coming. I am still fuming and furious about it. He caused ridiculous levels of pain in a child who already is terrified of doctors and to her mind I was a party to it. 

I must pause for a moment while I calm my heart rate back to normal. 

Jumping to the end, her tooth is in and a wire holding it in place is cemented in her mouth. Just when I thought we were going to be able to escape from The Bad Place, Doctor Dearest does the stare-at-my-child-as-though-she-is-an-interesting-insect-look (really, he could work at the medical visa clinic in China and fit right in), and continues to ask me questions about her face... Did she hit it? Is it swollen? Is it always discolored? Do her teeth really not match? Etc., Etc. It would have been bad enough if he had actually listened to me and believed me when I answered, but he didn't. He argued. He had the nerve to argue about what my child looks like when he is seeing her on possibly one of the worst days of her life and I've known her for five years. Just to get out of The Bad Place I agreed to a low level CT scan in his office because he was 100% sure that she had fractured her face. Since I have not received a call about this fracture, I'm assuming when he looked at it, he saw that I was correct all along. Wonder how much that little medical extravaganza is going to cost me? 

So finally we were allowed to leave. She is on soft food and is clearly not feeling terrific, though she did so some coloring later in the afternoon. She may need a root canal in a week or two to save the tooth. She also has a follow-up appointment next week. I will not be going. There is no telling what would happen after I've had a week to stew about it. J. will take her instead. What do you want to bet Doctor Dearest actually listens to J.? In which case me not being there will also be just as well.

If you are a medical professional, here is my plea. Listen to the parents, they usually know what they are talking about. And secondly, a person's intellectual abilities should have nothing, NOTHING, to do with the type of treatment they receive. They are human beings first, and all human beings deserve kindness and compassion and respect and dignity. They are not worth less of your time and attention and care just because their brains may work differently or not as fast as another person's. 

2020, I won't be sad to see you go. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.