feel the pain of everyone
INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS
The faucet in my upstairs bathroom says Price Pfister. While I brush my teeth my brain goes crazy with bad jokes about “what is the price to pfister” and “Pfister? I hardly know her!” This sort of uncontrolled grossness continues every workday. After walking Nora to school I head to the train and pass a convenience store. The window features an ad for some horrid-looking pastel ice cream product and the tagline is “All The Fun Of A Carnival…In Your Mouth!” You don’t even want to know what frightening circus-music porn scenes, starring demented carnies, play in my head after I read that. EVERY DAY.
GRAPHIC CONTENT. READER DISCRETION ADVISED.
Nora, who has been fully outfitted with palate expander for about a month now, finished her snack in the kitchen and went upstairs to brush her teeth. I still don’t know exactly what happened up there, but she came flying down the stairs making an awful keening sound, and with tears and hyperventilation showed me how one of the wires from the appliance had come loose and—cover your eyes here if you can’t deal with dental trauma—had actually pierced through her lingual frenulum. She could not open her mouth very far and of course it must have hurt like crazy and she was still making that terrible noise, and I tried to dislodge the wire but that resulted in louder muted shrieks.
Here we find that apparently one of my responses to injury is to unceasingly run my mouth. I was trying to stay away from any ohmygodohmygod-type monologues, worried that might freak her out further, but I was involuntarily keeping up a constant stream of it’s okay baby we’re going to fix this just relax I know it hurts you’re okay you’re okay etc. I thought about driving to the ER but then I thought shit, they’re not going to know what to do, and they’ll make us wait forever while they get specialists and wirecutters and it could make everything worse. Since there was no blood or breathing difficulties, it seemed more like a dental emergency than a medical emergency, despite the fear and pain. I made a freaked-out fast-talking pressured-speech call to the orthodontist to say we were on our way and YOU NEED TO FIX THIS, and then we drove there, with Nora making that awful, awful noise and crying and me trying not to crash the goddamned car and still talking, talking, talking to her the whole time like a crazy person. At one point she eked out a sad little, “Will you stay with me?” (because this dental office usually prefers parents in the waiting room) and I was like baby, I will go anywhere you go. If anyone even suggests otherwise they will get a punch in the face.
They took us back to the normal row of pediatric chairs, full of uninjured kids waiting for their cleanings or fillings or whatever, and not putting us in a private treatment room is something that I bet the staff now regrets very much. Because the on-call dentist came over and tried to just muscle the wire out of MY BABY’S flesh, with all the attendant screaming (as much as possible with her jaw pretty much wired shut) and crying. Both me and her on the crying, by the way. It was an emotional horrorshow disaster. I was holding Nora’s arms and keeping up my nonsensical monologue about it being okay, and a hygienist was doing the same thing, and finally the dentist got a clue and used several million packets of numbing gel, which quieted the situation at least. She got the wire out then, and they said the appliance was “distorted” so it all got removed. We have to go back on Wednesday to talk about next steps.
(Still trying to get the whole story from Nora, but it really sounds like a freak accident: she said she put her finger up above the appliance to dislodge a piece of apple before brushing, and the whole thing came down and caught on her tongue.)
I could not believe how tired and wrung out I felt after this ordeal. If there had been a bottle of bourbon in the treatment room I would have taken a shot, no question. People with seriously ill children have to coach and comfort them through painful procedures all the time, and I don’t know how they do it. I suppose they spend a lot of time feeling the way I did in the dentist’s office. In that case, I wish to hug each and every one of those parents.
In contrast, Nora bounced back as quickly as the drive home, talking of other things while I took deep breaths and tried to steer with my adrenaline-drained hands, and we spent the rest of the day cuddling and having extra treats. LT was out of town so she also got to sleep in my bed. And I surprised her with a trip to the dreaded Chuck E. Cheese the next day, which honestly is not that bad at 9 am, and we spent at least fifty tokens on skeeball. I rule skeeball. I am thinking about putting a skeeball alley in our basement.
MY TWO NEW FRIENDS
While I was typing this, Philip Glass just segued into Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and although the latter gentleman is dead and thus unavailable, it made me wish that this playlist were a dinner party. I would cook and made sure everyone had plenty of wine and Purple Drank, and maybe after dinner we could all play Scattergories or something.
—mimi smartypants is on a lean like promethazine.