Tooth's Last Stand

It's been a rough week in our house - with one emergency room visit, two visits to the dentist and X-rays at the podiatrist. All were for Ella (except the podiatrist visit is from my freak hair salon accident that broke my big toe last week) but she is hanging in there. This is the picture I took at bedtime tonight of the "during." The picture actually keeps the color of the tooth from looking too bad. Tuesday's visit to the dentist showed one front tooth (her left) was cracked up near the roots but was minor and possibly could be saved. The tooth on her right was impacted into the bone and was loose. Dr. Hogan said to come back today to evaluate and see if it had tightened up.


Below is the "before picture" from last month, with all of Ella's teeth. The before refers to before she ran down the hallway in her socks on Sunday and slipped and smashed in her front teeth on the hardwood floors. It was a big bloody mess, and the pediatrician recommended getting her evaluated at the ER, which Dan had the honor of doing. There wasn't an immediate danger of the tooth falling out and being swallowed, but we were directed to take her to the dentist for X-rays ASAP. Today's visit was horrible. The bad news was that the tooth was more loose and indicated there was breakage by the roots. So her right one is a goner - it is a matter of time. The doctor still wanted to try a pulpectomy (removing tissue from the smashed nerves to try to get blood flowing back to the teeth), which involved numbing Ella's mouth with gel then having four shots of anesthetic. She wasn't thrilled about the first three but completely lost it on the fourth. I felt like a horrible mother holding her down (she was lying against my chest in the chair), and I even got blood on my sweater as she flailed around begging us to stop.


It was heartbreaking, but I had to tell myself that we knew what was better for her than she did. A few minutes of discomfort beats several years of maintaining a retainer-type spacer for her teeth, to keep her baby teeth from moving and not allowing the adult teeth to grow in correctly. The doctor gave up after a few attempts and introduced us to the pediatric dentist down the hall, where we will try again next week. Wish us luck!


Other than that, here are some fun pictures from Thanksgiving in De Pere. We put up the Christmas tree and are loving getting Christmas cards already (Thea & Dawn win the awards for first of the season). Ella is reading all the Christmas books we have and loves to spy Christmas lights on the way home. Her favorite decoration we put up so far is a snowman with a pocket for each day of the month, with a dangling snowflake you move each day. We counted how many days left, and Ella can hardly wait!