Akra Jr decided to surprise us all on Saturday by having half of his face expand.

He’d been complaining of a sore gum for a couple of days before, but (as I couldn’t see any sign of inflammation or problems) we’d adopted a wait and see approach with the help of a little bonjela and reminding him to be thorough while cleaning his teeth.

Friday night, he came home from school and asked me if I thought his cheek looked a little swollen. I looked and it did look a little puffy, especially compared to the other side of his face. However, he wasn’t in any pain and again, another inspection of his mouth didn’t show anything unusual. We sent him to bed with a spoonful of children’s nurofen and the resolve to buy some children’s mouthwash in the morning, just in case.

Saturday morning, the swelling was much more pronounced and by lunchtime it looked very scary – the skin was taut as if it was the surface of an oddly shaped balloon inflated to its maximum size. The swelling was along his cheekbone, up by the side of his nose and the underneath of his eye was so inflated that it was pressing on his glasses – it looked like he’d been punched.

I have to say that the out of hours GP service in our area is awesome. We got a swift response and an appointment time (so all our queuing was done in the comfort of our own home, not in a waiting room). The GP was wonderful with Akra Jr, addressing him almost all of the time rather than just speaking over his head to me. We left with a prescription for an appropriate antibiotic and the instructions to see a dentist as soon as possible.

Dentist today was also wonderful – we were seen very quickly with little waiting around. Poor Akra Jr has a teeny cavity at the back of one of his baby molars – I feel gutted, he’s always had excellent teeth up until now. We’ve got the option to try and save the tooth or have it extracted with pros and cons to both. So we just have to decide by the end of the week once the course of antibiotics has finished.