Story #4: Emergency Room Visit

 Story #4: Emergency Room Visit

I left for MN fairly early in the morning on Saturday and Zeke wasn't up yet. By that afternoon, Steve texted me and said that he thought not only had the swelling in Zeke's face not gone down like we expected, it was actually worse.

He asked if we should take him in. Then he texted me a picture of Zeke's face.

At that point, we still didn't know if it was an issue with his tooth or an allergic reaction to the gel that he used. Once I saw the picture, I told Steve I would meet them at the emergency room.

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Fortunately, Zeke loves doctors and hospitals so it wasn't a traumatic event for him. In this picture, he's even trying smile. The other kids said he looked like a chipmunk. The entire left side of his face looked like he put a softball in his cheek. His eye was almost swelled shut and his nose was even swelling.

When the nurses asked him what his pain was like on a scale of 1 to 10, Zeke just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Meh." Meaning not much. I had to tell them that he has an incredibly high pain tolerance. When he had orthopedic surgery on his legs, knees and feet a few years ago, he was off all high-powered pain meds in two days, amazing the doctors at that hospital.

Anyway, it turns out that Zeke had an abscessed tooth. I knew that was painful but I didn't know exactly what it meant. Now you can know what I discovered.

An abscessed tooth is a painful infection at the root of a tooth or between the gum and a tooth. In this case, caused by trauma to the tooth when it is broken or chipped.

These problems can cause openings in the tooth enamel, which allows bacteria to infect the center of the tooth (called the pulp). The infection may also spread from the root of the tooth to the bones supporting the tooth.

If the root of the tooth dies as a result of infection, the toothache may stop. However, this doesn't mean the infection has healed; the infection remains active and continues to spread and destroy tissue.

We left the hospital with antibiotics and pain medication and instructions to see his dentist as soon as possible. Steve and I took him to Sioux Falls on Monday and Zeke had the wonderful experience of his first root canal. :-(

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