The WHOLE story...

Here is the story, in it’s entirety that I typed up to send out to family so they’d know what is going on and how to pray. The idea was that I would only have to tell the story once, but as soon as everyone read the email, they immediately called and I had to tell it again anyway. :o)

We go see the Oral Surgeon who specializes in jaws on Monday. It is our prayer that he can just set it, and wire it and be done. We are praying that surgery is NOT required, but we’ll know more on Monday.

So here is the story if you want to read it…

It has been a fun filled few days here at our house. Sometimes it feels like someone has hit the fast forward button and you find yourself sitting at an ER on a Friday at midnight, about to be transferred to an even bigger ER via ambulance, to get your teenager’s jaw wired shut. When did this happen? How’d I get here? I was just minding my own business, doing laundry and then zoom, here we are.

B had a motorcycle accident on Thursday afternoon. I won’t bore you with all the motocross jargon like high siding and head shake and whoop te doos. In layman’s terms, he crashed. The handlebar came up and caught him in the jaw under his helmet. He was in some pain and by the time they got home that evening he was a bit swollen, but not too bad.

The next morning he woke up and was quite swollen. Shockingly so. He was thinking maybe he had knocked one of his permanent teeth loose. I thought I’d better call his orthodontist and see if there was anything we needed to do to make sure that tooth stayed in place. Well all people who work on teeth and jaws do not work on Friday apparently. I spent the better part of the day trying to locate his ortho. When I finally did, he said to meet him at his office, he’d open up for us and have it X-rayed. He was afraid, with all that swelling, of a broken jaw. I was not worried about that. Surely he’d be in much more pain if his jaw was broken.

The ortho X-rayed him and while we were waiting for the X-ray to come out, he examined him. He said B was a classic case of a broken jaw and was certain that is what the X-ray would show. His midline was off (Yeah, I did not know what that meant either).

When the X-ray came out the ortho became more concerned. The jaw was indeed broken, but he was more concerned about something else. Apparently there is an artery that runs under the jaw and he was afraid he had nicked or broken that artery open and that all that swelling could be blood build up. YUCK! He was also concerned about some other things that showed up on his X-ray higher up in the jaw joint/skull area.

He said his X-ray did not show enough and told us we needed to go to our local ER and they would probably do a CAT scan to check for a bleed and or a brain injury. YIKES! I came in here thinking he may have knocked a permanent tooth loose!

So off we go to the ER at 7pm on a Friday night. OH JOY! Amazingly they got him in pretty fast and got him scanned. In case you were wondering, the boy does have a brain in his head, I saw it myself.

Now the waiting began, we had to wait for the radiologist to read it, then for him to relay the findings to the DR. Once this was done they decided to give B some SUPER-antibiotics because the scan showed some air pockets in his jaw near the break. This means that he did probably knock that tooth enough to let air down there. That is dangerous because that is where the infection will set in and cause all kinds of problems. However the swelling was not blood, the artery was intact, and they could find no other swelling or brain injury. It was just a broken jaw, and a lot of soft tissue swelling. (Just, don’t you love that!? Who says just a broken jaw?)

As he was getting his IV antibiotics the Dr came in and gave us the bad news. He needs to have his jaw weird shut and they only have one specialist who “does” jaws and he is not on call tonight and he cannot be located. We have to be transferred, via ambulance ($$$$$$) to PARKLAND AT MINDNIGHT ON A FRIDAY!!!! (For those of you not from around here, Parkland is the major trauma center right smack in the middle of Downtown Dallas, very far away from our house, and at that time of night was probably full of gun shot wounds and stabbing victims.) Needless to say this was NOT happy news. While my husband argued with the ER docks about the need for an ambulance transport (thank you all frivolous lawsuits that make these kinds of policies happen) B and I mentally prepared ourselves for Parkland at Midnight. (Parkland at Midnight, that should be a TV show)

As we were getting ready to go, and had made all the arrangements for someone to go to our house and keep G, E, and A because we knew it would be an all nighter, the Dr came in with some GOOD news finally.

Our little ER’s specialist had called in and after being apprised of the situation, said we could go home and did not need to go to Parkland. He said as long as B adheres to a strict liquid only diet this weekend, he can see him in his office on Mon morning. At that point he’ll decide if surgery is required before he gets it wired shut, for at least 4 weeks!

So there you have it. B is not in a lot of pain surprisingly, but he is quite unhappy at this turn of events. He might have to miss church camp which is in 2 weeks, and he will miss out on a lot of food, and I’m telling you right now, that boy lives for nothing if not to eat. And he’s skinny!

I’m hoping the next 4 weeks will fly by in fast forward like the last 2 days did.