I was at work, when I got a call from the school nurse. Five minutes later, I was running from the building on the way to pick up Ethan.

Did he have a fever? no
Did he suffer some horrible playground incident? no
Did he have a disgusting growth swelling around his tooth? yes

Bleargh

Two days prior to me running from work, he told me his tooth hurt. I checked his mouth, and *thought* it looked a little puffy, but handed him some floss - because they child had just noshed an entire bag of popcorn, and I figured he had a pesky popcorn husk wedged in there. He never mentioned another word about it until he went to the nurse.

So I ran into the office at the school, and there he was...looking miserable. We went to the dentist to get the news: His tooth...is...abscessed....

WHA??????????? How does a 6 year old get an abscessed tooth!?

The dentist gave us some antibiotics to help with the infection - but they couldn't see too much about what had happened. The x-rays clearly showed a bad tooth, but the problem was even boggling them. All his teeth were perfect. They were so clean - you could EAT off them (har har).

We went with the medicine and 1 week later, we were back at the dentist once the swelling had gone done, and Ethan was loopy from some kid drugs they gave him to make him not care that they were gonna jam a needle in his mouth and drill out his tooth. They told me if this "pulpotomy" didn't take, they were just going to have to yank the tooth (!!!!!!!!!!!)

MY POOR BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But the procedure went great, and they were finally able to tell what happened to his little tooth. Apparently, he broke it on something, and since it wasn't easy to see, we never noticed. Cavity central set in.

Now he has a stainless steel tooth near the front of his mouth. He loves talking like a pirate now, and some of his friends are calling him Cyborg Ethan.

And that was my excitement for the week.