Tuesday night Aiden let me know he had a canker sore in his cheek. I figured perhaps he had bitten his cheek in the accident since the sore was on the side he bumped. Not much to be done for a canker sore so I basically said, "Sorry," with a pouty face and moved on with my day.
Wednesday morning I was surprised to see him tell me in tears he wanted to see the dentist. I asked him if his tooth was hurting or if it was the same spot on his cheek? He was unclear in his response. I gave him some ibuprofen with breakfast and he ate every bite and got ready for school as usual. I couldn't see anything unusual inside his mouth so I told him I would call the dentist later and sent him off to school. I messaged his teacher to give her a heads up. It was so uncharacteristic of him to cry and complain of pain so I asked her to keep me updated if anything changed at school.
Sure enough I got a message from his teacher at lunch time saying she thought his cheek was beginning to swell and he didn't want to eat his apple. He had eaten the rest of his food and was playing at recess so she didn't think he needed to come home.
At the end of the school day I received a message from the school nurse that his cheek was indeed swelling and he had a low fever. It was too late for me to pick him up, he was already getting on the bus, but they wanted me to know.
I had scheduled him a dentist appointment for the next morning. It was the soonest available. So we iced his little cheek and stayed on top of Motrin and Tylenol for the evening. He still ate dinner but was not himself.
Thursday morning Aiden woke up with significant swelling and the beginning of some redness in his cheek. He was not nearly as upset as the morning before. But he couldn't eat normally. I made him soft foods and he awkwardly maneuvered them into his mouth and chewed slowly.
We made our way to the dentist. They were shocked when we walked in the door.
They took an X-ray and could find nothing going on with the teeth. No sign of abscess. No fractures or other notable damage. They recommended we go to ER for an X-ray of Aiden's jaw. Because I had told them we were in a car accident they thought he could have a fracture in the jaw.
I thought this was odd. How would he have gone a week with a fractured jaw without us knowing? And I had no desire to sit in an ER during flu season and flush 5 hours of my day away. So we went to our pediatrician's office.
They were able to push us onto one of the doctor's schedule even though there were no appointments available. We were seen within 20 minutes. So glad we had not gone to ER. We did do the jaw X-ray even though the doctor was confident there was nothing going on with the bone. It turns out Aiden had cellulitis in his cheek. We don't know exactly how or why. But it is likely a result of the bump to his chin in our accident.
Aiden was prescribed an antibiotic and we were given some instructions before being sent home.
I thought it was funny to see the doctor take a picture on her cell phone.
Friday morning the swelling and redness had gotten worse! Aiden's pain was not any worse but his cheek looked terrible. We scheduled another appointment with the pediatrician for that morning.
The pediatrician prescribed a much stronger antibiotic, scheduled us a follow-up appointment for Monday morning and gave us instruction to go directly to the ER if anything got worse or if he had not improved by Sunday morning.
Thankfully, Aiden woke up better this morning. He ecstatically told me he wanted to eat a real breakfast and told me with every bite "this no hurt!"
It's going to take some time for the swelling to go down. But the redness has gone away and the smile has returned to my boy.
Caity's phone flipped this image so the swelling looks like it changed sides.
Hopefully this will be the end of the adventure...
