I wake up with the most excruciating tooth pain, reminiscent of an infection I had seven years ago pre root canal. Corbin is 2.5 years and my newborn is 2.5 weeks. I’ve been feeling fabulous since Hamish’s birth until now. Despite the nagging ache in my mouth, I am joyfully making bat, witch, pumpkin and cat-shaped pancakes for breakfast.
After all, it’s Halloween and being Mom supersedes everything. I pour the wholegrain pancake mix into a measuring cup and Corbin dumps it into the mixing bowl while making cement truck noises. I crack an egg, rhythmically keeping time with the throb in my tooth. Corbin starts to combine the egg and the mix as I pop a couple of painkillers and reach for the protein powder. I add some milk and help Corbin to mix the batter completely.
The pan is warming on the stove as I spray the metal cookie cutters with cooking oil. Together we pour the batter into the shapes and Corbin bedazzles them with colourful sprinkles — a concession I make to create a fun cooking and eating experience at the expense of added sugar. When the pancakes are finished we ease them out of their molds and Corbin chooses to eat the pumpkin. I gingerly eat a bat, chewing ever so carefully to avoid aggravating my nemesis.
We get dressed to go have a 15 minute professional photo shoot just for the fun of it. We meet up with my girlfriend Kim and her daughter’s Lily and Sophie. Lily is a princess and Corbin is a prince. Kim and I hide on the stairwell just out of sight with our babies. The toddlers listen to Erin much better when we are absent.
I rub my sore left cheek and relay my toothache woes to Kim in the same story line that I tell her about the Halloween pancakes. The photo shoot is done and now Corbin needs to be taxied to his daycare Halloween party. After dropping him off, I decide to pick up a coffee. After all, I am still operating in sleep deprivation mode.
When I get home, I call the dentist. I tell her receptionist that I need to see someone between the hours of now and 2 pm since I have to pick up my son. What I don’t say is that my son has an afternoon tea party scheduled at our house with Lily and so I need to pick him up from daycare early. She gets me in for 12 noon.
They x-ray and deliver the bad news that I have a good-sized abscess in one of the top left molars — a tooth that has already had a root canal. The pain has been steadily increasing all morning and I’m thankful that they have at least found the problem. They tell me that they are going to prescribe me antibiotics and grind down the tooth a bit as the infection has shifted it. I wonder how long this will all take, as I don’t want to be late picking up Corbin.
They tell me that I will either need a dental surgeon to extract the tooth or perform some kind of next stage root canal to attempt to save it. Save it? You already tried to do that once. Take it out, I hear myself tell them as I wonder what time it is. Can I go now?
I’m grateful I have to get the prescription filled as it means I can stop at the store to get some fruit for the Halloween tea party. When I drop off the prescription, I badger the pharmacist with questions about how the amoxicillin will affect my nearly three-week old infant. I then pick out my tea party food, go home to set up the party, pick up Corbin, have the tea party with Lily, and then Kim and I head over to her place for dinner & an evening of trick or treating.
By 7:30 the whole left side of my head feels like it is throbbing. Words from Corbin’s newly attained Halloween book about the monster that wanted to dance are taunting me menacingly. Frank did a cartwheel, Frank did a flip. Suddenly his head began to unzip. I’m coming unzipped, I think.
That was Friday. Friday night I get maybe two hours sleep. I’ve come to the end of painkillers. The recommended dose says that I can’t exceed six tabs of Advil. I had taken six tabs before 8 pm. I don’t dare take anymore since I am breastfeeding. I sit on the couch, look at my husband and cry. I tell him that I would rather be in labour.
On Saturday, I’m calling the BC Nurses Hotline to find out if I can exceed the recommended dose. What will it do to my milk? Will my infant be ok? Will I be ok? Is my infant niggly because his tummy is bothering him and is this because of the penicillin?
I am at the end of my rope and I don’t have the energy to tie a knot. Tired, worrying about what the hell is going on in my mouth. Burdened by the concern for Hamish as I pop painkillers and antibiotics. What if it doesn’t get better? The nurse told me to go to Emergency if the antibiotics are not effective. How will I know? What if I have to be hospitalized? Can Hamish stay with me? Will I have to stop breastfeeding?
I am riddled with questions and in the relatively pain-free moments provided to me via a cocktail of Advil and Tylenol, I am building train track layouts for Corbin and reading him stories.
In these moments of sanity, I am even more aware of the difference between this infection and the one I had seven years ago — sans children. I am aware that I carry with me the blessing and burden of motherhood, and that when small people rely on you, a toothache is never just a toothache.
Photo Credits
Graham Lambkin, 2001 Forget about that headache, now you have toothache
Recent Christine Shaw Roome Articles:
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- An Award for Being Herself
- World's Smallest Book
- Giving up My Birthday for Water
- International Women's Day 2012: Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures.
Thank You, Joan. The tooth is long gone. That 2.5 week old baby is now 18months old and I’m still finding that sometimes focussing on bat pancakes is what gets me through the day.
I am pretty sure that many, many other moms and dads feel as deeply as I do for you Christine.
What a brave soul you are to have carried on regardless of the pain/agony of your abscessed tooth, but also the agony of everything else in your over burdened day..
Hope all this is long gone by now…..tooth also..:-)
Know for sure, that your children are more than lucky, they are blessed to have such a great and deeply caring MOM.
Bravo.