Drama

So London learned how to ride her bike without training wheels a couple weeks ago (thanks to some peer pressure from her friend Adam) and within a few hours she was off acting like a crazy person, cruising down the sidewalk and flying around corners at "90 miles an hour." I don't think I've ever used this phrase, but you could definitely say she "threw caution to the wind." Honestly we may have gone a little light on our "safety lecture" before she took off. I thought I said something about hold on tight and wear your helmet and use the brakes and all that ... but I really can't remember. And the bike is only a 12 inch, so she is what ... like a foot off the ground. I'm thinking, "What could go wrong?" I remember lecturing the boys time after time about bike safety (i.e., don't ride with a big sharp stick in your hand, don't wear your helmet backwards so you can't see, don't ride straight towards each other and turn at the last minute, and of course, "don't come crying to me if you fall and break your neck acting like a daredevil on wheels."). She definitely seemed more "chicken" and I wasn't too worried. I was wrong. We made it a whole five days without incident.

She fell on the neighbor's driveway and broke the fall with her front teeth. As you can see, there are NO OTHER MARKS ON HER FACE. I'm not even sure how that is possible. She told us yesterday that at the time she fell, she was tipping her head backwards and closing her eyes - a fine trick that one of her brilliant little friends taught her. BAD IDEA. So Dave gets to her first after he hears the SCREAM (I'm surprised all of you didn't hear it). Actually to her credit, by the time I got to her (and I was running), she wasn't even crying. She handled it pretty well. Better than Dave with his "Oh my gosh, that's horrible." That was really comforting hon. So we thought most of the blood, which was all over her face, was coming from her nose, but by the time we could even see in her mouth, we realized where the actual damage was. That funny little thing that holds your lip to your gums was gone and her gums were shoved up above her front teeth. On one side, the gums were shoved up so far, you could almost see the top (where the root is) of one of her front teeth and it was pretty loose. Ewwwww! So she is 5 and a half and not that far from losing them anyway, but these gums did not look good. It was like they were just shaved off above that tooth (sorry about the visual).

These pictures were actually taken the next day, but the night it happened, her lip was actually swollen out farther than her nose. Dave and I had to stiffle a few snickers in between all the "poor London, poor baby" stuff that was going on and the making sure she never ran out of popsicles and ice and all that. Her lip was seriously huge and starting to turn all black and purple underneath. Dave insisted I didn't send her to school the next day on the basis of "you just can't come back from that." We were envisioning jokes her senior year in high school about "that one time your lip was sticking out farther than your nose."

So instead we went to the dentist on his day off (he was at a funeral when I called). He did x-rays and confirmed that one of her front teeth was broken off just below the root and there was a big piece stranded up in there. Great. Her permanent tooth is fine. The "dead" tooth will turn brown and then black and we can either leave it in and paint it with a porcelain faces to get through the next little while or they will have to pull it if it abscesses. The problem is that the gums are really hammered right there, and the tooth is protecting the gum structure. So she is on a soft diet and is supposed to be "taking it easy" - let's be honest here, that is just not HUMANLY POSSIBLE. I tried to keep her still and that lasted about two hours. Since then, she has played in three soccer games, jumped on the tramp, and being whacked in the face twice by her loving brothers (once by a pillow and once by a snowball) and so far, the tooth is hanging in there. The longer we can keep it in the better. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

The tooth next to it is "shattered" pretty much. There are a series of little cracks going all through it and one day it will apparently fall apart in her mouth and I'm sure she'll really freak out when that happens. Wonderful. I can't wait. They'll have to go in and get the root out if it doesn't come out on its own. She's on an antibiotic for infection since apparently teeth get infected pretty easily. Fun stuff. It looks a lot better than it did. The gum has not recovered yet and we may be looking at a gingival graft somewhere in the future (yikes), but we are hoping that as the permanent tooth comes in, it will kind of pull the gum down with it.

So I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. It might just be payback for my series of accidents as a child that caused my parents stress and worry and earned me a nice thick file at American Fork Hospital. After she fell, she made a solemn vow to never ride her "stupid bike" again. So, once the bleeding stopped (and she could see past her lip), I took her outside and helped her get right back on. Now she's riding all over again. So I guess it hasn't slowed her down much. And the good part is ... school pictures were a few weeks before this happened, and hers turned out ... (drum roll please) just fabulous.

Thanks to everyone who has called to check on her or asked her or us how she is doing or spoiled her with nice soft Italian Ice while the rest of us were eating carmel apples (out of the question for her!). We appreciate all the love and kindess!