Toothless

Today started with Laura having to be at the oral surgeon's at 8:00 to have all four wisdom teeth extracted. The bottom two were impacted and the top two had already emerged through the gums. The procedure seemed to go by quickly. I don't quite see the wisdom (pun intended) in having all four out at once. You don't get the advantage of having one side of your mouth that functions or just having the pain minimized. She's in so much pain now. We have her in my bedroom taking Vicodin, ibuprofen and amoxicillin. She's miserable. I had suggested having the two bottom ones out now and the two top ones out during the summer. But I guess she only wanted to go through this once.

Kyle and I hung out in the waiting room while they hammered away on Laura's mouth. I could hear the metallic plink, plink, plink from there. 'She's really gonna hurt tonight' I thought. A young man behind the desk recognized Kyle. They had been friends in high school, and he is the oral surgeon's son. Kyle was bummed he hadn't known that ahead of time; he's sure he could have gotten us a great deal if he had told the doc he was his son's friend. I swear you can't swing a cat in this town without hitting someone who knows Kyle or his brothers.

When we were taken into the room where Laura was still in the chair, she had this strangely lost and bewildered look on her face. She looked like she had no idea what was going on It was as if she had awoke from a Rip-van-Winkle-style nap and didn't know where she was or who we were. We brought her home and as we put her in my bed she was crying. Tears streamed down her face; the anesthesia was wearing off. We had to get some smoothie into her before we could give her a Vicodin----not that I put much stock in that stuff. It never kills the pain for me. It takes only the edge off but never enough to give me comfort. We had to wipe the tears off her, wipe up all the blood and the drool, and help her out of the pain. Smoothie, Vicodin, ibuprofen, ice packs, tea bags, frozen vegetables, they all help a little.

It's times like these that make me resent feeling like I am the only parent. Where is Bill when she's hurting? Can I make it all better for her without her father's help? One evening in January she and the head cheer coach went out for a drink at the hotel across the street from the high school. While she was in there, one of the boys from the baseball team ran across the street, took the elevator to the top floor where there are meeting rooms, ran across the foyer and jumped out a window. He was lying in the street when she left. She was traumatized. She called me crying hysterically. Death is so foreign to us. Our society doesn't train us to accept death as part of living, as an unavoidable part of our existence. How are our young people supposed to handle death when it happens, especially when it is so sudden and seemingly pointless? How was I supposed to take this tragedy and make sense of it for her? I don't understand suicide, especially teen suicide. It is such a waste. I am her only parent during these times. It's a daunting task. 'Fix it, Mom. Fix it.' If Bill had been here, we could have tagged teamed it. But I was on my own.

Bill wants us to pick up Steve tomorrow while he is at the hospital. He thinks he might have to stay a few days and there is no one to take care of Stevie. Then I will leave town, and Carmi will be left to take care of him. But we all want to see him again, even Carmi and the relief caregiver, so we are more than happy to do anything to get him. He has an uncanny ability to perceive when someone is ill. At those times he crawls up on the bed next to the sick person and the warm and aura of his body have almost curative qualities. We will let him climb up on my bed with Laura. Then, if we're REALLY lucky, my new iPad will be delivered and she will be able to play with that. I took a gift card I'd received from my classroom parents and used some funds called 'adopt-a-class' to buy the iPad. It will interface with my classroom Smart Board and, in time, I might actually know how to use it. My personal reasons for getting the iPad were 1)to read my email 2)to read books from the local library and 3)to play Bejewelled on a nice big screen. But we'll let Laura play with it while she's recuperating. Kyle told Bill he'd have to talk to me about picking up Steve because Laura is under our vigilence right now. "What's wrong with her?" he asked. Kyle had already told him about the wisdom teeth, but he told him again. He is completely focused on his health, I can understand that. It's the quintessential Bill and, with his health concerns, we can write that one off to playing the cancer card.

Bill tells her she is in his will. He says he has given his friend, David, all the instructions and trusts that David will do the 'right thing'. He says Kyle found a will, although notarized, that wasn't the real will. Really??? This I gotta see.