Daniel loves sports. Since the summer he has been playing for the A team in his age group in the local GAA club and this is a source of unalloyed joy to him.
One Friday night he arrived back from training with a bloody lip. He had gone in to get the ball and his mouth had connected with another boy’s boot. Poor Dan. It was quite a bit later in the night when he confessed that his front tooth was loose. Mostly this was because he hadn’t been wearing his gum shield and he was worried we would be cross. He was right to be worried.
I rang my mother’s friend the dentist on Saturday morning (83 but how much do teeth change?). I said it wasn’t very loose but she said that front teeth were risky and I should get it seen to and ring the dental hospital which she thought was open on Saturday. It was not open (some things do change, it transpires). I decided to leave it and visit our own dentist on Monday. He x-rayed and opined that we might have “got away with it” and scheduled another appointment in a week. Sadly over the next week or so, Dan’s tooth turned grey which even I could work out was not a good sign. When we went back to the dentist he said glumly that it looked like we hadn’t got away with it after all. He put on a support thing and said he’d have another look in a fortnight but it is looking like root canal treatment is in Daniel’s future.
In view of this it was all the more devastating when Dan’s GAA team lost the end of season match which would have put them top of their division. At least he would have given up a front tooth for victory rather than defeat. Alas.
