I Nearly Lost My Favorite Thing about Me, My Smile, in a Fall in Europe

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

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In the first week of our vacation to Europe this year, I was at the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. I was taking photos of the greenhouse when I slipped and fell hard to the ground. I chipped a couple of front teeth and suffered jaw pain for four weeks. I tried visiting a dentist in Budapest, but couldn’t find one that had an English-speaking dentist available. So, I waited until we arrived in Portugal with our daughter and her family to visit a dentist in Porto, Portugal.

The dentist took X-rays, but she said she found nothing that she could see was causing the whole right side of my mouth and jaw to hurt. She surmised that I had a hairline fracture of the jaw, and I had to give biology time to work. Needless to say, the pain caused me to miss a lot of outings and tours that I insisted my husband attend. I decided that maybe she was right, and I just needed to let time pass. And my smile was intact, which meant a lot to me. Indeed, as I gave the flight attendant my boarding pass, I smiled at her and asked how she was doing. Shocked to see a smile, she told me, “Never lose that smile! None of the other passengers smile!”

But, even with a high pain tolerance, I finally gave in and called a dentist, and she found that one tooth had died from the force of the fall to my face. She sent me to an endodontist. Yesterday, he diagnosed a concussion to the tooth, which had caused it to die, and because nothing had been done for weeks, it had an infection throughout it and an abscess that could potentially lead to more teeth loss. So, I had a choice between extraction and a root canal. I opted for a root canal, not wanting to lose my smile with a gap in my front teeth.

My smile allows me to let people know that I see their humanity. It lets individuals know that I think they are worthy of my smile, and I hope to get a return smile. When someone smiles back, I know heaven rejoices to see the Kingdom of God on earth, as people show kindness. My husband says my smile was one of the things that attracted him to me, as it looked kind and earnest. So, I chose to keep it for as long as I can.

Today, as I take the antibiotics, prednisolone, and Ibuprofen 800 mg, I am feeling better. It will take weeks to heal, but I am on my way to healing. I was supposed to preach this past Sunday, but I couldn’t function with pain or concentrate to write a sermon. That motivated me to get help, but the real catalyst was the fear of losing my smile.

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