MATER

WARNING: Long, but Entertaining, Story Ahead.....

So, this past Thursday Grayer was having a bowl of ice cream and after he was done he decided it would be fun to dip his hands in the leftover melted ice cream. When I took him over by the sink to wash him off he ran away from me and proceeded to climb all over our furniture with his sticky hands. In a moment of last desperation to get away from me he climbed in the middle of our ottoman. (This is an example of what our ottoman looks like so you get the idea of how he climb into the open part.)

By the time I reached him he was trying to crawl out the other side, but I caught hold of his legs and pulled him back. The only problem was, when I caught him his hands slipped out from under him and he hit his mouth on the wood. He started to cry, but because the only thing I could see were his little feet and legs I had know idea he had hit his mouth. I thought he was crying because he knew he was going to be in trouble. But as I pulled him out and turned him around I saw blood coming from his mouth and saw, wait for it...

a hole where his left front tooth should have been!

PAUSE: I started freaking out!! People may not know this about me but my greatest fear is not spiders, or snakes, it is getting my teeth knocked out. Growing up I was always afraid of tripping down my parent's front stairs and knocking my teeth out on the marble floor below. So even though in this case it was not my teeth, I had just knocked out my son's front tooth -- We shall now call this my 2nd greatest fear!

So, I tell/yell at Andy that Grayer's tooth is gone. We look and fined it laying on the floor right next to the ottoman. It had come clean out, root and all. I grab my cell phone and can barely get my fingers to stop shaking so I can call my Dad. Thank goodness he was home and I tell/yell at him that Grayer's tooth had come out and asked him what to do.

PAUSE: For those of you who don't know my Dad he does not get freaked out by these kind of things. Which, is definitely a good thing being that he is a doctor and has to deal with this stuff a lot:)

So, my Dad very calmly tells me to rinse it with saline solution and put it back in. Okay, I'm thinking sure no problem I can do that, until he tells me that I have to put it back in hard enough so that I feel the tooth SNAP back into place. WHAT??? Did he really just use the word snap and tooth in the same sentence? So, I tell/yell at Andy what we have to do. He has the same reaction.... but we rinsed off the tooth with saline and I proceeded to put the tooth back in Grayer's mouth, but I chickened out and couldn't put it in hard enough so Andy had to finish the job. -- AHHH!!

PAUSE: Looking back on this experience I think I might have blown the whole "snapping" thing out of proportion :) --ha ha! Basically, we just needed to put the tooth in hard enough that it would stay in place and not keep slipping out!

We succeeded, and got Grayer's tooth back in and got him calmed down. My Dad then told me to find an on-call dentist and get him looked at. (Of course this all took place at night, after hours.)
So we call the hospital and ask if they have any on-call dentists. Long story short they kept giving us the run around so Andy hung up on them. Next, I called some friends in the ward to see if they knew of any dentists that have an emergency number. They told me that our Bishop was a dentist and they also gave me the number to their dentist. I tried calling our Bishop but he wasn't home so I left a message and then called our friend's dentist.

PAUSE: Here is where the story gets conflicting....

I explained to the dentist what had happened and that we were able to get the tooth back in and now we needed to know what to do next. Here is what he told me... "you need to pull the tooth back out" EXCUSE ME?? You want me to pull the tooth back out that I just "snapped" back in? He gave me a whole spiel on how I probably damaged the adult tooth by putting the tooth back in and that if we left it in it would lead to infection and blah blah blah. So again to make a long story short he told me that if we chose not to pull it back out then he could not help us. By this time our Bishop had called us back and said that he would come over and look at it, and not to pull it before he got there.
While we were waiting for our Bishop I called my Uncle, who is a dentist, and asked him what he thought, he basically told me the opposite of the other dentist. He said that if any damage was done to the adult tooth it was done when Grayer hit his mouth and so we were not going to cause further damage by putting the tooth back in. Basically, he said that he would NOT pull the tooth out again as long as we could get it looked at and have a splint put on it to hold it in place. (This is a tooth splint, it basically holds the lose tooth to the teeth next to it so it won't come out.)

Our wonderful Bishop soon arrived and came in and looked at Grayer's tooth. He felt it and was actually quite surprised at how firm it felt in the socket. He said that we should wait to pull it and find a dentist to look at it in the morning. I asked him if I needed to worry about Grayer swallowing it in the night and he said it was firm enough that we shouldn't worry about it.
That night I hardly slept. I was in checking on Grayer every half hour and in between those times I couldn't help but replay the incident over and over in my mind. I was of course blaming myself and couldn't keep the tears from flowing. I felt awful!
The next morning I was up at 6:50 am and started calling dentists to find one that opened early. One of the first dentists that I called was open at 7:00 am and he told us to come in.

PAUSE: I almost forgot... before our Bishop left our house he and Andy gave Grayer a blessing. And during my sleepless night I plead with Heavenly Father that Grayer's tooth would be okay. Here is where the story turns into a miracle....

When we got to the dentist office they started out by taking x-rays. Once the x-rays were developed they had to double check with us on which tooth it was. We couldn't believe it, they could barely tell from the x-ray that his little tooth had been knocked out! And when the Dentist examined Grayer's tooth he applied quite a bit of pressure and the tooth barely moved. He also decided that if we could keep Grayer on a soft diet a splint wouldn't even be necessary. Here we are not even 12 hours after the accident and Grayer's tooth had amazingly reattached!!

Complete Miracle!!

The Dentist was very complimentary and actually quite surprised that we had put the tooth back in, because according to him most parents wait for a dentist to do it and by that time it is usually too late to save the tooth!! YEAH, Go us!!! -- (and my Dad for walking us through it, thanks Dad for being so calm and helping us save Grayer's tooth!)

So, we made it through the weekend with nothing to report and went to the dentist again this morning. Grayer's tooth is still doing well!! On Thursday he will be getting a nerve treatment a.k.a. root canal which we knew would have to happen -- no alarm there, it will be a quick procedure and Grayer will be able to heal fully!! His tooth will probably turn a little gray but I'd rather have that than no tooth at all until the age of 7 when the permanent tooth would grow in.

I am so grateful for modern medicine and wonderful doctors/dentists! I am grateful that I followed my gut and didn't listen to the dentist who told me to pull the tooth out again. But mostly I am thankful for answers to prayers and priesthood blessings because I know that this was nothing short of a miracle!!

Okay, so you are probably wondering why I titled this post "MATER." Well, if you have seen the Disney movie Cars there is a character in the movie named Mater who happens to have two big front buck teeth, one of which is slightly longer than the other....... We aren't sure if it is the swelling from the accident that has caused this and it will soon go back to normal, or if when we put the tooth back in we didn't get it in exactly right, but Grayer's front tooth now sticks out and hangs just slightly longer than the other. Nobody would notice just looking at him but when he smiles just right his little tooth hangs over his lip and he looks like our very own little MATER!!!!

These aren't the greatest pictures, he wouldn't hold the snarl (Picture #1) or smile (picture #2) long enough for me to zoom in on his teeth but you get the idea!!