That time I got headbutted. IN THE FACE.

So back in 2004, I broke my jaw.  It was the month before my 12th birthday, I was in 7th grade, and I went on a trip to Busch Gardens with a huge group of kids from my school because the school did it as a reward for us having the best grades.  Anyway, I passed out in line for a roller coaster because it was 95 degrees and I'd waited for 45 minutes without water, and I landed straight on my chin, and the bone in the left side of my face that holds my two jaws together completely snapped in two.  You can still see the scar on my chin where I had to get stitches from busting it open.

The good news is, I still had braces at the time, so my orthodontist just put some super tight rubber bands in diagonally for about 6 weeks to get my jaw back in place.  The bad news is that my birthday and a family vacation to NYC were in the middle of that 6 weeks and I could only eat things that came from a blender and went through a straw.

Yeah.  It was fun.

Anyway, today about 2:30 my mom was getting ready because she and Blake had to go pick Chelsea up and then go to a doctor appointment in Jacksonville.  Blake was freaking out for some reason or another, and he kept hitting my legs, so I picked him up.  Well, I certainly should have known better.  He slammed his head back into my chin as hard as he could, right where that old scar is.  After all I've been through, I have a pretty high pain tolerance, and this legit made me moan.  I could still move my jaw, albeit painfully, and my bottom teeth weren't shifted over like they were last time, so I just shook it off.

The pain kept getting worse all day, and I just kept telling myself that like most injuries, it had to get worse before it got better.

Then I noticed the left jaw bone (the one I broke) popped every time I opened or moved my jaw in the slightest.  That made me a little concerned.

When they all got home about 6:00, Mom told me to take some muscle relaxers, hoping that would help the popping.  This muscle relaxer is one I've taken many times before and it always worked within half an hour for me.  This time, it did nothing, even after half an hour.

I was supposed to go to my orthodontist tomorrow, so we figured that if I could just hang on, he might be willing to X-ray it for me and save us an ER trip.  I didn't want to cost my mom the money, so I said okay...until I tried to make myself a turkey sandwich for dinner (untoasted bread) and three bites of that had me in tears.  So I knew I needed to get it checked out.  Luckily Mom didn't freak when I told her.

Well, while I was in the shower, Mom called the hospital and as it turns out, there is a new Urgent Care place right across the street from the hospital, but they couldn't tell her whether or not they had an X-ray machine.  I took a shower, and we left about 7:30.  The first thing we asked when we got to the center was i they had an X-ray and thank God they did.  Saved us $113 in co-pay and who knows what else in treatment costs, and we were out of there at 10:00.

Yay, it's not broken.  Just severely bruised all the way down the left half of my jaw.  And Mom stopped at Sonic on the way home and got me a giant milkshake (that I ate with a spoon), so there's that.  And the doc gave me some pain meds to get me through the week, as it should be healing after a few days.  Too bad I can't get them filled until tomorrow.

And that concludes the excitement for today.