2012, Down in the Mouth

2011 was not the best year I'd ever had.  In fact, it ranks right on up there among the worst.  I was very happy to bid '11 goodbye and hope for better results in '12.  So far, '12 hasn't gotten the "Happy New Year" memo.  Here's a summary of how my 2012 has stacked up, by numbers:

2:  days into the year
0:  all happened today, no other day
1:  1 kid
2:  2 emergency dentist trips

Yes, you read that right.  The second day of the year, I have gone to the dentist, not once, but TWICE for emergency issues for Peytie.

Last night, I realized that I am, indeed, the worst mother on the face of the planet.  Peytie has been complaining about her tooth hurting for a week or so, but since the Sound & the Fury have doctorates in complaining with master's degree in griping, I dismissed it.  She had been cutting molars in the far back and had a hard time with that, so I just assumed she was still teething (yes, I know that I should never ASS-u-me anything--the one lesson I retained from geometry class).  After hearing her gripe for a solid week, I decided to look.  Wanna guess what I saw?  A hole.  A little black hole.  Like the kind of picture they show kids to scare them into brushing.  AND flossing. I felt like calling CPS on myself.  Sure, she looks clean and well nourished, but her teeth are rotting!!  My sweet kid is the poster child for the anti caries league.  Yes, I just took her to get a filling in August, but I still felt like I had neglected my poor child!

I called the dentist and begged them to squeeze her in today (and made a mental note to buy Peytie a pony.  A pretty one.  With pink ribbons in her hair.  And gumdrops for hooves).  Turns out, the filling they had put in in August had fallen out.  To make matters worse, something about her storing food in the tooth (ewww) had rotted the area (given the fact that she inherited my horrendous teeth, means she's in for a lifetime of British jokes--yes, my mouth and college education cost my parents the same amount, and yes, I have been known to break a tooth eating a soft chocolate chip cookie, that's how weak my teeth are).  My poor baby came back to me all Novocained up, which they didn't have to do in the summer.   To see her slobbering all on herself made me feel all the worse.  My baby.  My poor, poor baby.  I wondered if a unicorn would make up for it?

I tried to be a good mommy and made her soup for lunch.  She snuck a piece of pizza from Lulu, but even Lulu felt badly for her sister so she let it slide.  Perhaps this was the one time Lulu should have yelled and screamed and taken it back. Poor Peytie had never tried to eat under the influence of Novocaine and wanna guess?  She took a chunk out of her lip.  And never felt it.  I don't do blood and this was a lot of it.  Torrents.  It looked like Attilia the Hun had marched through my kitchen.  I called the dentist and made ANOTHER emergency run.

The dentist called in the periodontist and together they packed and glued and gauzed the area.  By the time we had gotten to the dentist office, the bleeding had stopped and she was scared to suture it again, for fear of getting the bleeding started back up.  That was all fine and dandy by me, as the thought of that would have made me pass out (don't ask how I managed to even function enough to drive the 20 minutes from home to the office).
 
Perhaps I learned my lesson the hard way.  I didn't celebrate New Year's Day with the traditional Southern hog jowls and black eyed peas.   If I promise to eat a double portion next year, can I ask for a 2012 mulligan??  Please?

PS.  I have pics of Pey's mouth, but decided against posting them.  Because, well, ewwwwww.