Two days before Christmas, I’m 10 years old playing football with my cousin. It’s the middle of a snowstorm on a cold night. Playing for hours in our yard having the time our lives. I go to tackle my cousin; next thing I know as we’re falling to the ground his foot comes up and kicks me in the mouth. My tooth goes flying; no idea where it went. Blood pouring out of my mouth. I lay there in pain and stunned by what happened. I run up to the house yelling; mom comes running down the stairs wondering what could’ve possibly happened. My parents look at me only to see a bloody mess. My mom runs to get me a towel to try and stop the bleeding. My dad scurries outside and goes and looks through the snow to try to miraculously find my tooth. My dad and cousin start to pull up sleds full of snow up to the house, throwing the snow in hot water and melting it to try and find my tooth. After 2 hours of hauling snow up to the house to melt, my dad spots a small trail of blood in the snow and finds my tooth. My mom calls my dentists home phone at 9:00 pm and told them we had an emergency. My dentist graciously agreed to help us out on her day off. We met at her office at 9:20 pm. She got a type of wire, I believe used for braces and glued my tooth to it and glued it to my top row of teeth as well, Somehow by 10:30 pm that night, 3 hours after getting it knocked out, my tooth was back in.

Up to this day, anytime I play a sport I get a lecture; wear your helmet or you can’t play! It’s frustrating always having to always wear mouthguards and helmets when playing sports. Me losing this tooth has led to many annoying setbacks and situations I’ve been through and are going through currently. Losing my tooth caused all of my other teeth to shift while I’ve been growing the past years and I ended up needing braces. Many painful nights unable to sleep because of bad my teeth were hurting. Having to spend forever brushing my teeth getting food that was stuck in my braces out. After my getting my braces out I had a huge problem speaking. I had a very bad lisp and it was embarrassing to try and talk to anyone. For a while I was very upset and always wanted to be left alone and not be bothered. It was frustrating, I felt empty. I slowly learned to talk with only 1 front tooth and after about 2 months I finally felt like I could speak normally again. I started being more energetic, wanting to do things and talking a lot to friends and family and just overall feeling great about life. But this could all change tomorrow. I was given retainers over the summer to maintain the space in the gap where my tooth was missing. All I had to do was consistently wear them and all would be good. I didn’t. I didn’t think the gap could close so quickly but it definitely started to. A few months ago was my last checkup and I assured everything would go smoothly as expected. Well, it didn’t at all. The dentist told me there’s a good chance I would need braces again and need to rapidly wear my retainers if I want any hope of not getting braces again. I was highly frustrated with myself, I absolutely should’ve known better. Tomorrow the 30th is my next checkup and I’m not looking forward to it, I will likely find out if I need braces again. I dread thinking of starting this process all over again. I do not feel prepared for this phase in my life to go from the end straight back to step one.