Satchel vs. Tree

On New Year's day, the three ninjas and I decided to go on a family hike. I really wanted to show them the Yellow Trail, but we were wooed by the Germantown Greenway. We'd never actually been there, so I was happy with Plan B.



Soon realizing that the Greenway connected to the Greenline, we made a beeline for the unpaved trail that followed the Wolf.



It was fun to explore a new trail. See? Fun.



We were about a mile in when Satchel decided to climb on a bridge and dangle from an old dead tree. It seemed a little unstable so he hollered for me to hurry up and take his picture. Before I could oblige him, one of the limbs snapped, and hit him square in the face. I watched in horror as he was flattened to the ground.

Luckily before I could panic, he jumped up and said, "I'm ok, I'm ok."

However, he said his tooth hurt and it was clear that it had been chipped. His upper lip was also badly scratched. All in all, I'd say that the injuries were minor. The tree was fairly hollow and light due to being dead so impact wasn't too bad.

Since he was calm, I snapped a picture of his tooth (bottom right front) and posted it on our dentist's Facebook wall.

Seriously. How 2012 is that?



She quickly responded and we worked out how to treat it and had an appointment to see her the next day. Of course we did all of this while hightailing it back to the car. Satchel's lip was swelling and I wanted him to be still for awhile. Luckily we had some ice in the car, and a cup for him to spit in. (It hurt to swallow because the enamel was stripped from the back of his tooth.)

Ice, ibuprofen, and Oragel had him feeling pretty good an hour later, but we decided to skip our New Year's Day parties and just take it easy. On Monday, I went to the dentist with him.

"Will it hurt?" he asked me.

"Probably, but I'm sure Dr. Rump will do everything she can to make it not hurt too much," I replied.

"If it's going to hurt, I just want her to pull it!" he exclaimed.

So yeah, he was amped up and scared. Dr. Rump gave him the option of numbing the tooth, but the idea of the shot scared him more than the scraping and buffing.



I let him squeeze my hand and I did my best to keep him calm. In about 20 minutes he was all fixed up. (She even fixed his top tooth which had been chipped as a toddler!)

Now that the boys are getting older, I suspect our emergency room visits for head stitching will regularly be supplemented with emergency dentist visits. At the very least there will be braces.

This tooth "emergency" was nothing compared to the one we experienced in Nola with my niece.