It’s never good when your kindergartner sees blood dribbling down your chin.
It started with the oral surgery. Receding gums meant a graft of tissue from the roof of my mouth to the overexposed teeth. I was expecting the surgery to be uncomfortable, expected my gums to be sore. What I did not expect was the annoyance dealing with an injured palate. I had to wear a mouth guard any time I ate for the first few weeks to keep food from reinjuring the area.
But real surgical complications seemed very hypothetical to me. The dental surgeon also told me to take the Vicodin he gave me. I, wary of addiction and wooziness, didn’t open the bottle. Likewise, I wore the mouth guard at first, but after a few weeks of boring after-care, I decided everything had healed enough. I stopped being so careful.
So the day I took my daughter on a walk to get some groceries, I no longer thought about the mouth guard. I grabbed a few cloth reusable bags, and realized I was hungry, so I also grabbed some dried mango.
Let’s review: injured palate, hard and chewy fruit, small child, long walk.
We left, and I began snacking. I was fine for about ten minutes, until the stitches keeping the blood vessels closed in the roof of my mouth opened up, and (head wound!) blood started filling my mouth at an alarming rate…
I was at SheLoves Magazine yesterday, talking about learning to take care of myself. Join me there!
You Are Not the Problem: For AndiLit