BITTEN BY HER HILL OF AGONY

There’s nothing like a wisdom tooth infection to make an anxious parent age a thousand years over a stricken child’s plight

SHE is unwell. The infection raging through her has knocked her for six.

Resting on her bed, raining perspiration, grimacing at even the slightest movement, she is helpless and so are we.

As much as we may apply cold compresses and encourage her to keep drinking water, the infection’s heat is stronger and ruthless.

Each time it wracks her anew, I can imagine it smirking.

We say it will be all right, it will run its course, it will pass, even though every cliche is merely more evidence of all we cannot do.

She’s so small; always has been. There’s nothing of her.

And yet when she’s well you wouldn’t believe how this tiny girl can fill the largest room with her personality, her presence, her noise.

We’ve often asked ourselves: how can someone so small make such a bloody racket?

Her teachers often asked the same.

But as I say, that’s when she’s well, on top of her game and full of cheek; and these are more cliches, because the infection still has her and we are still useless.

It started in her mouth, via two wisdom teeth waking from 23 years of dormancy.

No doubt needing a good stretch, they soon started to push: one to the left, one to the right, then both sharply upwards.

Terrible things, wisdom teeth. Only good for causing trouble, which they do sneakily.

By the time her teeth started to niggle, she was already feeling lethargic and not quite herself.

By the time the pain was more constant, the infection had taken hold and was now exploring elsewhere inside her.

Then, when this gradual and conniving build-up erupted in a detonation of pain and fever and illness, she became a stranger to us.

What I mean is, she was not the person to whom we were accustomed. She was limp and heavy. Her eyes were neither open nor closed. Her skin was ghostly white. She was quiet. I remembered another time like this, when she was three, already unique and incapable of shutting up. Then one day she did shut up. We called the doctor, he advised close observation and to bring her in tomorrow.

When finally she fell asleep, we went about menial things. Making coffee, preparing dinner, checking messages.

After finishing a phone call from the home office, I put my head around her door to check she was OK. She so clearly was not. I tried not to panic, tried not to drop her as she turned limp and heavy, her eyes neither open nor closed, and as her skin, instead of the ghostly white of now, revealed the telltale red mottling of scarlet fever.

She was so quiet then. She is quiet again now. We watch her and she is three and 23 at the same time.

I think that must be the way with our children. They get older and never get older.

When they are sick, it’s parents who age a thousand years.

After the antibiotics kick in and gradually bring her back to us, and to herself, she wakes to the inevitability of surgery on those rebellious teeth.

It’ll be a hospital job, and sooner rather than later.

“Nip it in the bud,” says the dentist, a man sure of his skills yet unaware of two important points.

One: talking in cliches doesn’t provide any relief.

Two: from the moment she was born, I have called her Bud.

She’s not happy about the prospect of surgery.

She’s making quite a lot of noise about it. In fact, she won’t shut up. I’m delighted to say.

TERRIBLE THINGS, WISDOM TEETH. ONLY GOOD FOR CAUSING TROUBLE, WHICH THEY DO SNEAKILY