Remarkable

Y’all, 2023 has come out swinging with our family, specifically with Banshee.

She opened January 1 conquering her bike without training wheels.

It was maybe 10 minutes after this that she collided with her scooter handlebars as she fell.

Next thing I know, Brent is walking in with her crying and blood pouring out of her mouth.

The girls and I go into action grabbing wet paper towels to give help and relief to her mouth.

We have had mouth injuries before and they’re crazy bloody, so I literally didn’t think anything of it until after a few minutes I took a peek to assess the damage.

What I saw made my head spin.

All I could see was red and a few pieces of white.

HOLY COW!

While my head is spinning, one of her front teeth falls out.

Banshee lets out an excited, stunned, and my mouth hurts giggle and I place it on our counter.

I come back and Brent and I talk with our eyes and mouthing words.

No urgent dental places were open that I could find because it was the day after a holiday.

So we all packed up and went to Kosair Brownsboro.

We waited in the waiting room for 3 hours before going back to a room for care.

During those three hours we flew through gauze because mouth is so vascular.

I was probably changing her gauze every 10 minutes or so.

She would just nonchalantly hold it to her mouth and notify me when she needed a change.

We hit the potty a few times as we waited, which was interesting.

I walked her into the bathroom and blocked her view of the mirrors because I feared if she saw her mouth she’d freak out…it looked really bad.

We finally made it into a room.

We snuggled up on the stretcher and watched a movie in between nurse and dr visits.

She also went into the space looking room to get x-rays all by herself, then came out proclaiming she loved getting x-rays.

This girl kills me sometimes.

Her mouth is missing teeth, or displaced, and she’s stoked about the x-ray experience.

*shrug*

After we were back in a room for over an hour we were transferred (we transport ourselves) to downtown Kosair where they have a dental on-call.

Before we left, I snagged a picture of her mouth, trying not to cringe while I did.

I didn’t even see this much white when I looked before we left the house for the ER.

When I took this picture it has been hours since she complained about pain, and she just patiently waited while the dr and nurse looked, took pictures, and spoke about her mouth.

It was remarkable.

When we arrived downtown, we were in and out within 2 hours.

The dental on-call said her remaining front tooth and lateral incisor were so loose they needed to be removed.

The other two teeth, the other lateral incisor and K-9 were pushed up into her gums and would descend back down as the adult teeth move down.

So they loaded her up with Versed, and got to work.

When the medicine hit, she was head-bobbing and slow-blinking.

The dentist gets everything ready and Brent and I were holding her arms while another nurse kept her head still, and the dentist placed an opener into her mouth,

Then came the tears (which we were warned about but didn’t want to leave her in her time of need).

It was horrible.

Crocodile tears when we knew the teeth needed removing.

They gave her a mouth block, waited a minute, then pulled the first tooth.

They waited a few seconds and pulled the second one.

Done.

It lasted a total of 1 minute from start to finish.

Thank goodness.

We scooped her up and held her close and she finally calmed.

The dentist cleaned up her teeth and gave them to us – but they came to us in a urine collection container, because apparently many children have had so many teeth removed over the past week she was out of her cute tooth holders.

We laughed and cringed all at the same time.

While we waited for discharge papers, we were able to experience drugged up Banshee.

Then this:

We finally left and arrived at home just after midnight, where her two older sisters were waiting up for her due to concern.

Once they were able to see her, they both relaxed and were able to get to sleep.

The next morning, she made bank.

We may also take her to Target to pick literally anything she wants after her traumatic experience.

Or maybe just ice cream.

Nonetheless, she took all of this in stride.

She rarely complained, she was cooperative, and had a great spirit the ENTIRE time.

Remarkable.

That is the word I have chosen for her with regard to this entire experience.

She is remarkable.

With all of the sensory items she has in front of her that could have shifted this experience were nowhere to be found.

Remarkable.

I feel like my brain is still reeling from it, and that word just continues to invade my thoughts as I process it all.

Remarkable.