Dane fell this afternoon while he was riding his bike and hit his teeth on his handle bars. His top two teeth were pushed in quite a bit and it also busted them. What do you do when you have a mouth injury at 5 in the evening? I didn't know where to take him. Because it was just his teeth that were injured and no other lacerations, we decided to call the dentist, and thankfully they were still open! Our dentists here (Bernstein and Perkins) are the best dentists I have ever been to! They had us come right in and dropped everything they were doing so they could both make sure that Dane was ok. They were so nice. So, after four x-rays and a visual exam, it was obvious that Dane had knocked the top two middle teeth back and that they had been chipped pretty good. They needed to be moved back into place ASAP, but we would need to see an oral surgeon for this. So, the dentist called the oral surgeon and had an emergency appointment set up. We were to meet him in 45 minutes at his office. He was in Virginia and would have to drive all the way back to Silver Spring. I kind of felt bad making him drive all this way, but both the dentist and the surgeon said it needed to be moved back into place right away. Dane was a pretty brave trooper through all this. He was in a lot of pain, but he let everyone look inside his mouth. The oral surgeon numbed Dane's mouth real good and gave him some nitrous oxide to relax him. It didn't look like it was all that hard to push the two teeth around, the surgeon made it look so easy! The got the two teeth back into position and put a little plastic bridge over the tooth teeth to anchor together so the teeth wouldn't move anymore (that's the white thing on Dane's teeth that you see in the picture). He also got one stitch to close up a gap that had been made when the teeth were pushed back. Now Dane can't use his front top teeth to eat for several weeks until the teeth have healed. I have no idea what this will mean for his two teeth. We won't know if they will be ok or if they're going to die. We were told that we needed to see a root canal specialist to see what he thinks. I'm not sure what they'll do about the teeth being broken either. That won't be fixed until the teeth are more solid in the gums again and the bridge can come off I'm sure. What's even more crazy about all this is that this happend right as the missionaries showed up at our house to eat dinner with us! But crazy doesn't faze me anymore, I'm a seasoned warrior. (I must insert here, without sounding "churchy" or anything, that my Heavenly Father has helped me get to this point, lots of work, but well worth it.) We just cleaned up Dane's mouth, I took Dane to the dentist, and Todd fed the missionaries. No big deal. I think Dane's natural tendency to have his mouth always hanging open saved him from having any mouth injuries. The dentist and the surgeon were a little surprised he hadn't bitten through his lip when he hit his mouth. If you know Dane, his mouth is always open and his top teeth are always showing. See, a blessing in disguise!
The white bridge is covering up both teeth to stabilize them (blood still everywhere, the mouth bleeds forever!). You can see below the bridge how his teeth are broken, looks like a half circle.
