Happy Birthday Delia!

Yesterday I was walking home from work and I saw Keith driving up the street to meet me. He stopped and I got in, and I saw Delia in the back seat. She was holding an ice pack wrapped in a bloody paper towel pressed against her mouth. She was calm, not crying, but it looked like she had been. Keith was white as a sheet.
What happened? She took a playground swing to the face. How many times can this happen to one kid? (I learned later that someone swinging next to her had jumped out of the swing and it flew back all crazy like.) This time it hit her right in the mouth. Evidently there was a lot of blood at first, but by the time they got to me most of it had stopped. Keith asked me if I knew any dentists. Of course I don't know any dentists! Especially right off the top of my head. Except I did remember someone telling me that the pediatric dentist at the Health Department was pretty good, so I suggested we go there. Keith said, "At least we have health insurance!" and I said, "No Dental!" So that made him look like he was going to throw up.

Turns out the people at the Health Department are REALLY nice. Delia was much calmer than both of us by the time we got there. She had an x-ray, which showed absoultely no damage to her teeth. The swing hit her right in the gums, and they were cut and bruised, but her front teeth were not chipped or loose or anything. So that's good. We made an appointment for Thanksgiving Break to come back and have a cleaning and a cavity filled. It all cost much less than we thought it would, although the nurse was cutting us a LOT of slack and charging us the bottom of the sliding scale they use even though we had no proof of income, because it was an emergency. I don't know what'll happen when we go back and show them our tax return, because we made enough money to not qualify for CHIP last year.
Anyway, the crisis is averted, Delia is fine, if a bit irritated by the rapidly healing cut on her gum. Man, she FREAKED OUT when she tasted the Oragel (or Anbesol, whatever) so we scrapped that plan and she just swished with warm saltwater, which turns out not to burn like she feared. I think the smoothie we got after we left the dentist helped a little too. :)

And Today she turns 8 years old.