Yikes! Thursday we had one of those days that makes you just want to pull your hair out! First of all, Wednesday afternoon I noticed something on Shelby's upper gum. For those of you that don't know, Shelby broke her right front tooth 2 years ago. We were at the YMCA for a swim and next thing we know she smiles at us and half her tooth was gone! She was still nursing at the time so I immediately got out of the pool and headed to the dentist's with her. He filed her tooth nice and smooth, and Shelby went home and collapsed in exhaustion from the whole ordeal. You see, she wasn't too thrilled (who would be?!?!) at Mommy laying in the chair with her and holding her down. Mommy wasn't too thrilled about it either, but it had to be done. Anyway, this tooth has given Shelby trouble for quite a while now. She has gotten it filed down a few more times (I told you she's a busy girl!) and has decay in it. Earlier in the summer she had a dentist's appointment and she actually let him drill it out. I know, we were all amazed. BUT...then she totally freaked when he tried to fill it. So...she's been walking around with more-or-less and open hole in this tooth, just hanging out the welcome sign for more bacteria to come on in. O.k., back to the thing on Shelby's gum. So it looks like a blister, the gum is really red, and its right above this broken tooth. I think "o.k. that's strange," and turn to my husband, Dr. Martin, later that evening for advice. He says "Jenn, that's an abcsess." Oh. Yuck. So, I leave the bedtime routine up to him and scour the internet for information about tooth abcesses. The best I come up with is that when you have a person with complicated health issues, like little Miss Shelby, you don't mess around with these sort of things. Great. I slept good that night!
That brings us back to the pull-out-your-hair day. Hang in there with me here, I know I'm jumping around. We've been trying to switch Shelby to a pediatric dentist as we hear they have more tricks in their bag (o.k. really its 2 extra years of training) to help kids feel comfortable in their office. This is what we seriously needed with Shelby. We hadn't gotten the switch done yet, but had a referral from our regular dentist. I asked Scott to track down the insurance information, as we don't have cards for our dental, and call this new dentist with that information so then I can call and set up an appointment. He does this, runs into hang-ups, calls me, and so-on. In the meantime, I also called our regular dentist to explain what I had discovered on Shelby's gum. They know her very well so I hesitate to even switch her from them, but I know that they have exhausted all their efforts to try to calm her. The wonderful receptionist takes the message immediately to the dentist who says that she needs to get on a antibiotic and have the tooth pulled. The dentist didn't feel comfortable, though, prescribing medication with all her antibiotic allergies so he recommended I call her Pediatrician. Called the Pediatrician, got more pedodontist (that's a pediatric dentist, if you didn't know) referrals and I was back to the phone calls to find a dentist to look at my little girl. Mind you, this tooth is causing Shelby no pain whatsoever. No fever, you know, none of the "typical" I-have-an-infection-in-my-body signs. Finally, the pedodontist who we were referred to initially says "don't wait until after work at 2 p.m. to get her on the antibiotic, get her on it ASAP." O.k., but I'm at work and can't leave. I call Scott to give him the millionth update on this saga and say "Can you go pick up her med and bring it here?" Yes he can? Whohoo! One hurdled climbed. That same dentist also says the tooth needs to come out and recommends we take her to an oral surgeon. O.k. so now I get 2 referrals for oral surgeons, but it turns out that one doesn't take children as young as her and the other is on vacation. Rats! So...I put in a call again to our trusty regular dentist. They give me more names to call. Monday Shelby will meet with the oral surgeon and most likely they'll pull the tooth Tuesday. The antibiotic she is one will probably hold the infection at bay so it doesn't spread. I even called her transplant team to make sure they were o.k. with all this. They are. O.k. so that brings us to about Noon yesterday.
Shelby and I finish off the day at school and then head home for a quick moment before we jet off to Dr. Deutsch's (her ped. GI) for a check-up. Chicago o.k.'d us seeing him right now rather than dragging our butts in there. Thank you Chicago team! We had received a call from Dr. Deutsch's wonderful nurse Karin in the a.m. asking us if we could be there 15 minutes early for pictures with Dr. D. Fine. Can do. Turns out Dr. D was named the head of Pediatrics at the clinic and the college of medicine. Check out the article here. RR Star photographers were there to take pictures to go along with the newspaper article about him. He picked Shelby to get pictures with because, we'll, if you know Shelby, she is very charming and quite photogenic. I think she also sees Dr. D as a really tall buddy rather than so much as a doctor. Let's say that once she established with everyone "No shots and no x-rays, right?" she was quite comfortable letting him examine her. He talks with her a bit, checks her out, and then turns to talk to me. By the way, her liver is doing phenomenal. Who would guess that she has a nasty diseased liver in her cute little tummy?!?!?! Not me! So...Dr. D and I are talking about her awesome labs and I am firing questions at him. In the meantime, Shelby is carrying on quite the detailed conversation with the 2 photograhers from the newspaper and...in the blink of an eye...she falls backwards off the examine table!!! I jumped out of my chair and grabbed her up and she was SCREAMING. She had every right to. She had landed on her head and shoulder. Dr. D. checked her out again when she calmed a bit (the sucker he offered her helped some) and said she was o.k. We get home and Grammie goes to pick her up and she starts screaming again. I called back to the clinic and asked Dr. D's nurse to put in orders for x-rays because we were coming back down. The x-rays looked fine, Shelby was wonderful for them, but we believe she still might have a broken collarbone. We'll keep our eye on it (of course!) and keeping chugging along.
O.k., that pooped me out. I'll update more after the tooth gets pulled.
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