Zachary's Teeth

This hasn't been a good tooth week for Zachary. His previous mishap this week pales in comparison to his latest mishap. If you want details read on, if not you can skip to the pictures below. However, they're not for the faint of heart.

Yesterday he was swimming at G'pa & G'ma's pool. Grandma Carroll was kind enough to invite them over for a swim while I got some things done here at home. Zach was doing back flips off of the raised ledge that is about 2-3 feet above the pool. He was doing fine until he didn't quite push out far enough on the last one and came down and hit the brick ledge with his two top permanent front teeth. They both came completely out root and all. They weren't chipped or damaged and he doesn't have a cut lip or even a fat lip. His two front teeth took the complete force of the fall. Dorothy called me and I came and picked him up and was able to get him and his teeth (the girls had to dive down to find them in the pool) to the dentist in a short amount of time.

We have two dentists that work together and they did a great job of putting their heads together to try and figure out the best way to put the teeth back, in hopes of keeping them alive. Because his teeth weren't completely done forming on the root end, it leaves a higher chance of his teeth not making it. For now they have used a type of cement on the root end of the teeth and put them back in the socket and have a hard plastic piece that is glued to the underside of his teeth and anchored to his other teeth to try and hold them in place. They are still so loose that the tool the dentists use to blow air moves the teeth out of position.

Keeping Zachary still for the next couple of weeks is key here. No bumping or jolting of any kind in hopes that the ligaments surrounding the teeth will reattach themselves and start to anchor them in again. In a few weeks they're hopeful to put braces on the front teeth and anchor them in a little more to his side teeth. He's missing his teeth just to the sides of the two front teeth, so they're having difficulty with anchoring them in right now. The other problem is that because these permanent teeth aren't completely mature the root is still quite brittle and if it doesn't continue to thicken and grow it would make those teeth very brittle and they could easily break at the gum line.

They have put extra composite material on his back bottom molars to keep his mouth kind of blocked open so that he can't accidentally close his mouth and hit his top teeth on the bottom teeth. Eventually, they are pretty sure they'll have to do a root canal to help strengthen these teeth and keep them from breaking.

For now we won't really know much more until some time passes. I will be bringing Zachary into the dentist 2-3 times a week to keep a close eye on things. Meanwhile, keeping him immobile is the most important and also most challenging (especially for this active little guy). He's able to eat soft foods by opening wide, me slipping a spoon in his mouth, turning the spoon upside down and using his bottom lip to slide the food off of the spoon, being very careful not to touch those top teeth. He's not able to use a straw either because of that same reason. Sleeping is a challenge to keep him from rolling over, laying on his face, or hitting it with his arms and hands (of course he is my child who unknowingly flails in his sleep). Last night went okay. We wedged him in the recliner with pillows so he couldn't toss and turn and then watched him closely. We contemplated tying his arms down once he was asleep, but he did okay last night without doing that. We'll see.

Short term goal: Have his teeth reattach and continue to get the blood supply to the nerves. Have ligaments rebuild around the teeth.

Midterm goal: Have the teeth be able to live and thrive until his teeth are done maturing (around age 18+).

Long term goal: If possible keep these teeth forever =), but the dentists have explained that it is highly unlikely. If we can at least get him to the mature age, then they can put in a permanent type of tooth and avoid bridge/denture/etc. fixes until then.

These pictures aren't the best quality as all I had with me was my cell phone. These teeth measured about 1 1/4" long. They were huge! I should have stuck my thumb in the picture for size comparison.

Here's my brave boy showing the empty tooth sockets.

Here the teeth are back in but still bleeding a lot.
We were instructed to not clean him up yet.Here he's getting settled in back at home.
He's still in just his swimming suit and towel.

Here are some before and after pictures of how his teeth did/do look.

Before

After

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Before (close up)

After (close up)

You can see that they weren't able to push his teeth all the way back in where they were and he split his gum line right above these teeth, so now he doesn't have a gap between his teeth. Hopefully, if the teeth survive, the other teeth won't crowd these too much. So much waiting to do. In this picture you can also see the hard plastic thing on the backside of his teeth I was referring to that's holding those teeth in right now.