Tuesday, August 29, 2006

A Tale of Two Teeth

Just as I was getting ready to tell you about Z losing his first ever tooth and how a little mouse came and left a 2€ piece under his pillow; how easily he suspends disbelief; and how he seemed to have no problem whatsoever making the cultural shift from it being a mouse doling out the money here but a fairy in Scotland, something else happened.
E tripped and fell against the coffee table late in the evening while we were having dinner with a long-lost friend. Cue much screaming and blood. She had a horrible cut just below her lower lip and one of her beautiful little front teeth had been knocked so hard that instead of pointing down it was pointing inside her mouth. Luckily, we live close to the children's hospital, so I bundled her up in her blood-spattered pyjamas and took her to their Emergency Department. For once, the place was empty and appeared to be staffed almost exclusively by ex-students of mine. I resisted the temptation to test their medical English skills in situ and they patched her gash up with some nifty glue. Unfortunately however, they don't deal with dental emergencies, so I had to take her to another hospital and another emergency department to have her tooth seen to. To cut a long story short, they managed to put her tooth back in the right position (after a few shots of local anaesthetic and a bit of pushing and pulling with some nasty-looking metal pliers) and they glued a wire across all of her top teeth to hold it in place. After I'd taken her home to Papa, it was time for a midnight run to the all-night pharmacy to pick up her antibiotics.
There is no guarantee that she won't actually lose the tooth, in which case she's going to have a toothy grin for a VERY long time.
Through the whole patching-up ordeal she didn't cry or complain once. And when it was all over, she announced that it wouldn't really matter anyway if her tooth fell out because of course that pesky mouse would come and leave her some euros.

5 comments:

L'Oiseau said...

I hadn't heard about the French mouse before. I do remember the tooth fairy rewarded an extra painful tooth loss with a 50p coin (as opposed to the usual 20p). I couldn't work out how the fairy knew and became a little paranoid that someone was watching me.

Sarah Mackenzie said...

Ouch! Never mind, E, at least you will get another one. If you were a tyrannosaurus they would just keep on coming... or so K tells me.

I Googled (cap G just to keep the Google trademarkists happy) to get a rather more accurate tooth count and ended up on a creation science evangelism site. The joy of surfing. Anyway, here is their take on dinosaurs:

"Evolutionists believe the T-Rex disappeared 65 million years, but the Bible, Gods Word, teaches dinosaurs were created on day six about 6,000 years ago. People killed most of them (they used to be called dragons) and a few small ones may still be alive today!"

Better sharpen up all of your remaining teeth Z and E, you never know when you're going to need them.

Lesley said...

L'Oiseau: I don't think I ever really bought the fairy thing, but I was good at pretending.

Sarah: Thank goodness for evolutionists. On a similar theme, I came across a blog today written by a final year medicine students who says that doctors are keeping the truth from us, IUDs kill babies!

Papilles et Pupilles said...

Petit Papilles va bientôt commencer de perdre ses dents. Sa soeur croyait dur comme fer à la fameuse souris (Rikiki chez nous) et à 10 ans passés je suis certaine qu'elle y croit encore. Enfin j'espère qu'il ne m'arrivera pas les mêmes mésaventures.

Quand à trouver l 'hopital des enfants vides !!! sidérant ! je n'y suis allée que 2 ou 3 fois et pffffff !

Lesley said...

Beefking: I think Z would like to be a gold-card member as soon as possible

Papilles: C'est pas la première fois que je vais aux urgences mais c'est la première fois que j'attends moins de deux heures dans la salle d'attente. Pour les petits accidents, je recommande donc le dimanche soir vers 22H au mois d'août.

Confinement

Being confined indoors most of the day, just the four of us, is reminding me of the days when my children were wee and most of our weekends ...