Henry's Teeth...or the Lack Thereof...

Well, Sunday evening did not go quite as planned.  Todd was taking apart the boys’ bunk beds in anticipation of our move at the end of the week.  I had gone in the room to take pieces of bed out to stack elsewhere.  While stacking a piece of bed, I hear Henry come crying towards me.  It is clear his mouth is bleeding so I take him into our hall bathroom and turn the water on at which time I see a tooth in his hand.  The bleeding is also much heavier than I anticipated.  So we move to a different, better equipped bathroom, and it becomes clear his lip needs more expert attention.  Also, in the transition from hall bathroom to master bathroom, Todd says he found his other tooth on the living room floor.  I could not believe we just had our second child knock out two teeth. 

So we quickly get ready to go to the urgent care place up the road.  We get there, go in the back immediately, and as the nurse practitioner looks at it, she hems and haws and finally says that we need to go to the ER because he would probably need to be sedated to get his lip stitched up (and they do not do sedation there).  I get directions from her since we’ve never been to a hospital here, and fortunately it’s not too far down the road.  (And on a side note, there are hospitals everywhere here.  I have never seen so many, so I had to know to which one she was referring.)

At the ER we walk through a heavily packed lobby, check in at the desk, and are immediately taken back.  I’m loving the not having to wait part.  They do quick vitals on him and bring us to an exam room.  A doctor comes in immediately, quickly asks what happened, takes his teeth, and puts them back in his mouth!  I was not expecting that or I would have put them in milk.  Having been through this before, I was under the assumption that they didn’t put baby teeth back in.  She says that it’s best to put them back in and that we have to go to the ER in downtown Houston that has a pediatric dentist on-call 24/hrs a day to get a bracket in place to hold those two teeth in place.  She says the lip will heal on its own and doesn’t need to be stitched up.  Again, not what I was expecting!  I played my, “I’m not from around here” card when it came to asking directions to the next hospital.  She left and said she’d take care of all of that.  And she did.  She printed out google maps for me and wrote down the most direct route for me to get there.  Then she said, “The worst is over.  Drive slowly.”  J

So we were on the road again.  The next hospital was on a road that had many, many hospitals.  Baylor has their own hospital, University of Texas has their own, Texas Childrens’ (not our destination), Kelsey-Seybold, on and on.  Huge, towering hospitals to the right and left.  It felt like New York City for a few minutes, but every building was a different hospital.  Her directions were great and I was praying the whole way there to not make any wrong turns.

Henry had been a very quiet and cooperative patient up until now and had fallen asleep on the way into Houston.  We made it to the parking garage, level 2 (like suggested), and amazingly found the pediatric ER.  I carried Henry the whole way because he remained asleep at that point.  You could tell the adrenaline was pumping because he weighed in at 45 lbs at the first ER and we walked for quite a distance to get from the parking garage to the second ER.  This ER was also crowded, and this time we waited. 

Watching the Disney Channel (which had horrible shows!)

Finally back in a room, the ER doctor says, “They put his teeth back in?” with a sort of eye-rolling like, “why would they do that?”  They called the on-call dentist.  He arrives and is VERY good with Henry.  Henry would not communicate with anyone.  He would not speak and would only barely nod or shake his head at questions.  This doctor worked up a rapport with him to where Henry would answer his questions (nodding/shaking) and even give him “five” when asked (albeit weakly).  Henry was also scared to swallow so he was constantly having to have his gauze changed out from the drool.  He was quiet, subdued, and mostly just observant to what was going on around him.  It was also 10:00pm at night and he was quite tired.  

They took an x-ray of his mouth to make sure no other teeth were fractured and fortunately there were no other problems.   They also said they were going to sedate him so that they could take out his teeth (that were barely holding on anyway) and stitch up his lip.  And that’s what they did.  They only gave him half of the sedation medicine, though, because he was already acting so sedated on his own.  They kept asking me if the other ER gave him any pain meds (no).  They quickly took the teeth out with their medical instruments (which really I could have plucked them right out of his mouth they were so loose in there).  Then when the other doctor started to stitch up his lip he put up a bit of a fuss.  I’m thinking it was then that they wished he had been given the full dose.  J  But really it was fast and he doesn’t seem to remember it hurting or anything. 

Drinking juice after it was all over.

So finally it was all done.  They had to monitor him for 30 minutes since he’d been sedated before letting us go home.  We were there for much longer than 30 minutes.  I started to get worried they were going to call the cops to see how he “really” hurt himself.  Finally they came in and took off the dreaded blood pressure cuff on his leg (that really bugged him), took out his IV, and the post-ox thing on his finger which he liked because his finger glowed red.  We made it to the car after looking out of several windows that showed a crane outside resting on the ground.  Henry was fascinated by this at midnight.  Paid our $10 parking garage fee and got home at 12:45 a.m.  Henry didn’t move a muscle when we put him in bed. 

So, this is the story that I told all the ER docs that we encountered.  The story of what we were told had happened (since neither Todd nor I witnessed it).  It was simple.  The eldest told us that Henry was running in the living room, fell/ran into the ottoman (a soft ottoman), fell to the floor, and boom, his teeth fell out.  We didn’t suspect anything different since we are constantly telling the kids to not run in the house.  Also, Henry seems to injure himself frequently because he just doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going.  Since Henry wasn’t talking that night, he didn’t say anything about it.

Then, Monday evening, Todd asked Henry what happened, and Henry freely told him.  He didn’t just fall to the ground; he was pushed.  By the eldest.  Henry just said it matter-of-factly to Todd.  So that changed things.  We clearly had to do something with Josiah.  We decided to make him use his money to buy Henry the only foods he could eat – bananas, sliced cheese, pudding, jello, ice cream, applesauce, etc.  .  I spoke with him about it and really got nowhere.  Just a circular conversation.  No remorse; just anger over the punishment.  Todd talked to him.  I don’t know how their conversation went.  But I took him to the grocery store Monday evening and had him pick out the foods, give his money to the cashier, and I spotted him the $2 that he went over.  In the grocery store he was much more positive talking about the foods he was going to get Henry.  He even said that the next day he’d have to draw a lot more pictures to sell so he can earn more money again.

Poor Henry has to take a very bad tasting antibiotic three times a day (12.5mL which is a LOT to get down) for a week.  He gets a bowl of ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to get it down.  At first I thought that there was something in the medicine that was making him hyper because he would just start acting crazy after taking it.  Then it dawned on me that I was giving him a bowl of chocolate ice cream with it.  But it helps the medicine go down, so we’re going to continue that trend for the week.

The next day.

He’s three full days out from the accident and already his gums looked like they’ve healed.  The holes have closed up and they are still bruised, but they look sooooooo much better.  The doctors said that the gums are the fastest healing tissue in the body.  I remember that with Caroline’s teeth/gums, too.  His lip still looks pretty bad.  I think the problem is he has a lot of dried blood hanging from it (sorry for the gross image) and it looks bad.  But the swelling has gone down a lot. 

For the most part, he’s back to his old self again.  Talking constantly, except now he spits when he talks.  I even have to tell him to stop running in the house 10 times an hour.  I am beyond excited to move to our new house on Friday and not have hard ceramic floors anymore.  Hardwood floors have got to be a little more forgiving. 

I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d have two children knock out two teeth each.  These are going to make for some lovely family pictures the next 4-6 years…