Tooth Drama on a Saturday Night

I had planned on a quiet Saturday evening. Aaron was going to be at Origins, I was going to put the girls to bed and watch some great medical reality TV on Discovery Health. And then near bedtime, Cordy and I were playing, and I asked her to let me count her teeth. When I got to the last one, I noticed something didn’t look right.

Hoping it was just a little bit of dinner stuck to her tooth, I gently brushed her teeth, and noticed the molar still looked weird. Grabbing my pen light, I asked her to open her mouth again, and I got a close look (warning, graphic description): a jagged V slice was missing from the middle of her tooth, with the yellow pulp visible.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “Does your tooth hurt?” I asked Cordy.

“No!” she replied with a smile. No way, that’s impossible, I thought. That HAS TO HURT. She had no idea when she did it, or how. I have no idea when she ever ate anything hard enough to crack her molar.

Part of Cordy’s unique character is her reaction to pain. Or maybe that should read lack of reaction. I’ve watched her do things that would make the average child shriek in pain. I saw her tear half of her fingernail off, and the most reaction we got from that was a temporary sad face. She doesn’t process pain the same way most of us do.

I still can’t figure out if she is feeling the sensation of pain and interprets it differently in her brain, or if pain doesn’t register at all. But either way, extreme pain generally doesn’t bother her. (Now, try to pour water on her hair and she screams that it hurts. I don’t fully understand it.)

I called her pediatrician’s on-call service, and the doctor said it was best to take Cordy to Children’s Hospital for a look. Infection was a concern, as was the pain issue. So after spending 20 minutes trying to prep Cordy for what to expect, we left for the hospital.

Cordy was scared. I knew this was likely to end in disaster, but at the same time she seemed to understand what I told her. The doctor wanted to look at her tooth, and they wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. She asked if she would get a new tooth, and I told her they would try to make her tooth all better. She promised she’d be brave if I promised not to leave her.

At the hospital, she was fine as I checked in, and I had hope that she might do better than I expected. Then we walked back into the triage area, and the aide asked her to stand on the scale for her weight. She lost it right there, and her fear slowly built into a full, old-school meltdown. No one could touch her.

I sat on the floor with her in our nook in triage, holding her while she tried to break free to run away, primal screams and repetitions of “Let me go!” coming from deep inside. My own face burned with embarrassment at the stares we got from other parents and staff. I know I should be used to this by now, but it still gets to me. I wanted to scream out, “She has autism! Transitions and new experiences are hard for her!” but instead I focused on calming her down. She finally calmed down right before we were moved to an exam room.

Hiding under the table as she came out of the meltdown

The resident who came in to examine Cordy was young and I had to explain all of Cordy’s quirks to her. Cordy hid under a chair in the exam room, unwilling to show her tooth or let this new stranger near her. She got a history on Cordy, then said she needed to talk to her attending doc to see what steps we’d take next. I was left alone in the room with Cordy. She eventually came up onto the bed with me, and then exhaustion from her meltdown caught up with her. Cordy was overcome with sleep.


When the attending doctor came in, he got to look closely at the tooth, thanks to Cordy’s ability to sleep like the dead. He was amazed that she wasn’t in extreme pain, as it is a very deep break in the tooth. Nothing would be done tonight, he said, but she will need to have something done with that tooth.

Based on her behavior, it was obvious that she will need to be sedated to have her tooth fixed. That’s something they didn’t have the set-up for in the ER, but the dental clinic at Children’s has the ability to do general anesthesia. So the plan was put in place for her to come see the dental surgeon on Monday to determine what to do with that tooth.

Cordy also received a prescription for a heavy-duty pain med that would make drug seekers green with envy. Even though we can’t be sure if she’s hurting or not, the doctor said the only ethical thing to do in this case is assume she is in pain, treat with ibuprofen round-the-clock, and then use the prescription pain med if she shows any signs of pain or says that her tooth hurts.

Even though I’m nearly-a-nurse and know that general anesthesia is safe, I’m still terribly nervous about Monday now. First, I know we’re going to have a replay of everything that happened tonight. But on top of that, they will have to hold her down and sedate her.

And even though she has no allergies that we know of, we’ve also never had to know her allergies. She’s only been on antibiotics twice in her life. She’s never been seriously injured or sick. However, I do know that she reacts strangely to nearly anything she’s given. Pain medications don’t seem to do anything at all, while she has adverse reactions to Benadryl. Hell, even blue food coloring affects her behavior. Nothing about her seems to react the way it should. I worry she’ll be ultra sensitive to the anesthesia or something will go wrong.

I hate seeing her afraid. And I hate having to even think about risking general anesthesia for a tooth problem. At this point I want Monday to come and go quickly and with as little disruption to our lives as normal. But I’ll confess I’m so worried that something might happen to my Amazon warrior princess.

I don’t want to be on this side of things – I want to be the nurse reassuring the parents that everything will be fine, not the worried mother hoping her sensitive child won’t have a bad reaction under anesthesia.



Mid-Blog Crisis

Last weekend I attended PodCampOhio, a free conference for bloggers, vloggers, podcasting, and other types of social media. Overall, it was a great experience, and I feel like I learned a lot, while also meeting some new local bloggers, including those I already knew in name if not in person.

But one unexpected side effect of the event was an enhanced feeling of uneasiness with my blog. I’ve already been feeling as if I’m adrift lately, either due to a lack of focus or the possibility that my life has become so boring that I can’t find anything interesting to blog about. Don’t worry, I’m not pulling one of those I’m shutting down my blog 4-ever c-ya!!! dramatic moments, because that’s not what I want at all. I’m simply trying to refine and make this a better place for me and for everyone who stops by and cares for what I write.

One session I attended at PodCampOhio had me convinced I needed to “rebrand” my blog. I mean, after all, just look at my blog name: A Mommy Story. What in the world does that tell the reader about me? It says I’m a mom, and this is likely a mom blog. Well, that wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t 163,946,037 OTHER mom blogs out there.

A Mommy Story is a somewhat dull name, created after the first three tries were already taken on Blogger back in 2005. Instead of taking the time to ponder and wait for inspiration to gift me with a creative name, I kept typing out new names desperately, because I had to have my blog now! now! now!

This session talked about setting yourself apart from your “competition” – offering unique value, being specific and remarkable, finding something to stand for, etc. Honestly, it was a lot of good information, even if it did send this blogger into a panic. I’ve screwed it all up from the beginning! I thought.

And then another session discussed good storytelling, and I realized I couldn’t tell you all about my blog in one sentence. Hmmm…maybe I’m not focused enough?

Finally, Dawn advised me that what I really needed to do was keep my blog name, but get my lazy butt off of Blogger and make the jump to WordPress, since Blogger isn’t always playing nice with some computers/browsers of late, which could be affecting my traffic.

So…yeah. I’m more confused than ever. Do I try to focus my scope more? Do I try to find an angle that works? Do I find a new blog name and rebrand? Do I switch to my own domain and WordPress? (OK, that last one really does need to happen. I am lazy, and I like the look of WordPress.)

Or do I just say to hell with all of that branding and narrative advice and keep on doing what I’m doing? I know some people will tell me that I shouldn’t worry about all of the superficial stuff like branding and contrived storyline focus. Writing should be organic, right? But I’m not one of those bloggers who can weave words with ease into artful essays, or come up with a story that is outrageously funny and over-the-top.

I’ll also admit: I do care about my stats, and I know I’m not supposed to care. I don’t like seeing that I’ve lost 1/4 of my traffic in the past year. Comments are down, making me wonder if I’m actually connecting with readers in a meaningful way or if my posts are still interesting. I still love every one of my readers like I love my chocolate cake – maybe even more so now that there are fewer of you.

(Side note: Wow, talk about rambling. This post counts as everything that might be wrong with my blog. All over the place without an editor. All I need for a truly dreadful post would be several different fonts, font sizes and colors throughout. Bear with me – I’m working through this as I type.)

So after writing all of this out, where does it leave me? Neurotic and in desperate need of a Xanax? Probably.

I’m not making any decision at the moment. I’m going to think on the topic at least until after BlogHer, then decide if I want to make any changes. Well, aside from the move to WordPress – I’m pretty certain on that one, once I learn CSS or save up for a good theme design. Maybe I’m just thinking too hard about this – after all, my birthday was also this weekend, and birthdays always make me susceptible to overthinking about what I’m doing with my life.

Feel free to add your thoughts to my one-person argument. I’d love to know what you want to see from me. Or how you solved a blogging crisis you’ve had. I know I’m really opening myself up to criticism here, and my flame-proof jacket is standing by. Just know that any comment of UR CRAZY = not helpful.

(Oh, I’m going to regret hitting publish on this one…)



Summer Camp, Week 2

After last week’s introduction to camp, I’m happy to say that no one has been ejected from camp. Yet.

On Wednesday morning, I saw Cordy’s after-care teacher and told her that I thought Cordy would do well now that she understood the routine. The teacher, however, was unconvinced and again tried to talk me out of leaving her in after-care. She yet again mentioned that Cordy needed other kids to play with because she was lonely. I assured her that Cordy loves to play by herself.

And then she said, “It’s not right for a child to be that upset. You didn’t see how she was on Monday. I’ve never seen anyone that upset before. I’m amazed they were able to carry her to the room.”

I was unimpressed. “Was she bleeding?” I asked.

“Uh, no.”

“Then she wasn’t that upset,” I explained. “When she’s so out of control that she hits her head on things until she bleeds, then call me. THAT is her ‘really upset’.”

“Well, you’ll be home today, right? I’ll call you to come get her if she has any problems.”

I rolled my eyes. “I hope you’ll try to work out the problems BEFORE calling me.” And with that, I left.

As I expected on Wednesday, after I had a long chat with Cordy about what to expect from the after-care routine, and after the teachers decided they would take her directly inside instead of to the pick-up area, Cordy had a fabulous time. When we went to pick her up, she was sitting quietly in the room with a teacher beside her, drawing picture after picture and describing what she was drawing.

They reported that she had no issues at all that day, and really enjoyed the afternoon. See? I know my kid.

The next morning, I saw the after-care teacher again, smiled sweetly and said, “I hear she had a great day yesterday! I told you it would all work out!”

No smile in return. Instead, she frowned and said, “Well, she didn’t have a fit, but she was clearly bored with no one else to play with.”

Whatever, lady. It must suck to be someone who can never be happy.

I spoke with a friend who works there, and she told me that this particular woman teaches kindergarten and is used to working with kids who have been in the daycare system since they were little. These kids know how the system works and give her few problems. Someone like Cordy doesn’t fit in with her idea of how children work.

On Friday, we had thunderstorms moving through Columbus at drop-off, and so all of the kids had to start the morning inside. Cordy was not happy with the group circle time inside, and Aaron had to stay with her for awhile while she cried from the change in routine and all of the noise caused by the echo in the room. She eventually calmed down and had a good day.

The humorous end to the week? On Friday, there were two children with Cordy in after-care.

And what was she doing?

Sitting quietly by herself, looking at a book.

My warrior princess is going to do just fine at camp, in spite of those who would rather she not be there because she’s different.



Dueling Special Occasions

So when your birthday falls on the same day as Father’s Day, which one gets the day off? Or do they cancel themselves out entirely? I’m not really sure.

Of course, birthdays aren’t nearly as cool as an adult as they were when we were younger. I no longer wait with excited anticipation for the big day. Now I just hope to sleep in and get through the day without a meltdown from a child. And maybe an adult beverage in the evening.

Happy Father’s Day, Aaron. And happy 33rd to me. Hopefully double 3’s works out better than 32, with fewer new wrinkles and grey hairs.



A Hair Story, in Three Photos

Take one four year old with a thick head of curly hair that has reached unmanageable lengths and become heavy and sweaty:


Cut off about this much hair while she’s distracted watching Animaniacs:


And voila! A lighter, less sweaty ‘do perfect for summer camp:

(Be thankful she has curly hair to hide how uneven the cut is. Mommy went to nursing school, not cosmetology school, but this particular four year old is unwilling to sit for a proper haircut.)

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