All She Wants For Christmas ...

{Before I begin, I'd like to wish a most happy and loving Father's Day to all you great dads out there!}

I’m not sure which was worse for me ~ the phone call from hell telling me to get to the emergency room as quickly as possible because my daughter had an accident at the swimming pool, or racing through the double glass doors at the hospital and finding her sitting in triage with a bloody cup holding her two front teeth. No, the phone call was the worst part … the not knowing. Finding her in the chair was actually like being reborn (just realizing that she was breathing and coherent).

This particular life-trial happened nearly six years ago, but as I sit and recall it through written words, it might as well have been yesterday.

It was the first day of summer vacation from school. Sarah Jane had been invited to a friend’s house for a pool party with four other girls. This “friend” wasn’t one of the usual girls she’d spent much time with during the school year, but what mom can say “no” to such an invite on the first day of summer vacation? So I dropped her off, kissed her goodbye and said that pathetically stupid line that we parents all say to our young ones, “Be careful.”

I was happy to go home and work on sorting out a personal website I had been developing at the time. Peace and quiet … at last … no one to interrupt me for lunch and no one to tell me how bored they are with television and the hundred and fifty seven games and videos they had in the next room.

SJ was just twelve back then and that’s the age when I’d overhear her talking on the phone one moment about all the cute boys in her class and find her the next moment on her bedroom floor adjusting Barbie’s clothes. Complete confusion at twelve is quite normal; I remember it well.

About two hours into the afternoon, the phone rang and the trauma began.

I was told, by this new friend’s mother, to get to the emergency room as quickly as possible because there had been an accident. She said there was really no time to explain, but that SJ was involved and she needed immediate care. As my shaking hand held the phone to my ear, I could hear loud noises and many voices in the background, none of which sounded at all like SJ’s. “Ten minutes,” I said, as I hung up and grabbed my car keys. I didn’t care that the door was left unlocked and truthfully couldn’t have cared less if I was even presentable. A flood of nightmarish visions crowded my brain as I swerved through country roads, the gas pedal nailed to the floor the entire time. I half-ass parked the car and raced inside the emergency room, unsure what I would find. None of this was too good for one who had had a heart attack three months earlier.

I waded through people with belly aches to find the triage office, and was thrilled to see my daughter’s little head as she sat in a chair holding a bloody towel to her mouth. I realize how that sentence would sound in any other context, but “thrilled” in this case is an understatement. Trust me on that.

SJ and the girls had been taking turns playing “gymnast” and climbing on the side rail of the above ground pool – positioning themselves to do summersaults into the water. It was all good, girly, pool fun. Sarah Jane, however, lost her footing and slid on some water on the rail, tumbling backward ~ directly into the cellar bulkhead (doors open) and down the stairs.

It was roughly a seven foot drop. She came down onto a cement step, slamming the back of her head and forcing her two top front teeth clear from their foundation, through her chin just below the lower lip. Hard to imagine ~ but true.

The entire ordeal only took seconds. Blood covered everything within her peripheral vision, but she immediately spotted what looked like two small white pebbles on the ground in front of her. She doesn’t remember what made her hand move out to snatch them up. They were her teeth and the moment she realized this – she went into a state of near-shock.

Luckily, the friend’s dad had worked as an EMT for some time and knew enough to place the teeth into a cup of milk to preserve any life that was left in them. They were rushing her off to the hospital within minutes; only stopping to call me first.

After the immediate “high” of seeing my daughter alive, the “eww” mode kicked in and it was all I could do to maintain any sort of calm in her presence so that my facial expressions wouldn’t scare the crap out of her. I didn’t fare too well in this area, but I was there for her. That was something … or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

It seemed like forever until the maxillofacial doctor arrived to the hospital (it was a Saturday, but of course). Until he got there, they wouldn’t even give her anything for pain. Nothing. This tore me up inside, but I knew better than to stand and beg the ER folks for meds. It simply doesn’t do you any damned good.

They managed to replace the teeth into their respective cavities (as in “holes”), but whether or not they would remain there would be a mystery for many years to come. They had an important job to do … to reattach themselves to the root and grow new tissue around them. It was iffy at best.

The gash on her upper chin where the teeth had exited was ghastly; through and through, yet jagged. That was remedied quickly enough with several stitches ~ and there was talk about plastic surgery down the road, though this was the least of our concerns at the time.

All is so-so by now. I say this because she is still undergoing several dental procedures to try to make it permanently right, but she’ll always have a sensitivity there. The teeth did their job, and perhaps had they been replaced with more care (time was of the essence) they wouldn’t protrude quite as much as they do, and they wouldn’t be visibly lower than the rest of the teeth. This can all be cosmetically fixed, if and when we ever muster the money to do so. It’ll come with time.

SJ has grown accustomed to her new look. I’ve asked her several times over the years if she’d like to have the scar repaired, and her reply has always been pretty much the same, “Nah, it’s a part of who I am now mom, it gives me a story to tell.”

I can think of nicer stories to tell, though I fully understand her logic. Look at me! I’m telling the story here and it didn’t even happen to me.

So I guess lessons were learned that day.
Firstly, neither SJ nor I had any idea that teeth could be pushed through a chin. A lip? Sure … but a chin?

Secondly, wiring teeth into the upper jaw for an entire summer doesn’t stop a twelve year old from talking incessantly.

And lastly, it’s not such a bad thing at all to be interrupted by someone asking you to fix lunch. Not a bad thing at all.

SJ heading to her prom last June