Jack-o-Lantern Look-Alike

Accidents are common in a house full of boys.

I feel like we are pretty blessed, because for as many accidents that the boys have, we don't have more visits to the hospital E.R. We tend to have a lot more physical damage done to property than bodily harm done to the boys. 

But this wasn't the case on October 22, when an accident happened at school, with the results being permanent damage done to Kanyon's sweet face.  

He was running at recess, playing tag with his friends on the Big Toy. Up until that day, he'd played basketball every recess, trying to improve his skills. But on this particular day, he wanted to do something different. When he was running around, he tripped, and hit his mouth on the slide, and his tooth broke. His permanent, front tooth. 

Of course it happened on a day when neither his parents nor his grandparents were around; we had all gone to Challis to watch Ammon's district cross country race. I was just arriving in Challis when the secretary from our elementary school called and told me what had happened. The tooth had a clean break, but it broke very close to his gums, at a slanting angle, and about half of his tooth was gone. I talked to him on the phone, and he said it only hurt when he breathed, which made Josh and I worry that there was nerve damage. Since nobody was around to come pick him up from school, he said he was fine to wait the 2 hours until the school day was over. 

I wish this was a better, clearer photo of the dental damage--
I took it with my cell phone after I got home from Challis.

The next morning, we took him to the dentist. He had an x-ray done, and it showed there was no nerve damage. A few days later, he had a filling done on the tooth, but when they drilled some of his tooth away to make a rough edge for the filling to stick to, they said it touched a nerve. Because of this, his tooth might eventually die, which makes me sad.

I'm glad that the dentist was able to fix it, but I'm sad that his sweet little smile is forever changed. I'm bummed out that his year-old permanent tooth is already broken, especially since it's his most noticeable tooth in front, too!