I remember when my brother was little, he would go flying down our steep driveway in his Big Wheel, no holds barred. My mom used to say “Bones can be set…JUST DON’T BREAK *THE TEETH*!!”

Leanne, just read your column. My husband’s in the same situation you are… lost a front tooth while fencing back in high school and the crown’s never been right. On the other hand, my dad knocked out both front teeth as a senior, and it saved him from having to get braces! I hope Tomas’ teeth are okay.

I don’t have children of my own, but I did have a foster daughter. The worst pain I ever had to watch my foster daughter endure was after she got into a car accident. She was in the hospital with what turned out to be just severe bumps and bruises… but at first they thought she might have a back injury. She was pretty miserable, and they had her on morphine, and the morphine made her really emotional. To give you an idea of her mental state, we were allowed to bring in food for her and she asked for Taco Bell, then burst into tears when she found out they were out of beans.

Her birth mother found out she had been hurt and asked to visit her. Like an idiot I said yes… like an even bigger idiot I left her mother alone with her in the hospital room after she drew herself up and said I had no right to get between her and HER CHILD. But a little birdie told me not to go far, and so I put my ear to the door and listened. Her mother started right in saying that she must have wrecked the car on purpose just to make the insurance payments go up because she didn’t have any other way of hurting her mother. We’re talking about a kid who’s so hurt she’s not allowed up to go to the bathroom, and she’s sobbing and begging her mother to stop because she can’t get away from her.

I was a lot younger then and I had no idea what to do. It was like an angel took my hand - I opened the door and said very calmly, “She doesn’t need to hear this right now.” It was like a miracle. Birth mom backed down and apologized to her and started behaving decently, and by the time she was ready to leave everyone was smiling and hugging. I did learn my lesson though, I never left that woman out of my sight with my baby for two seconds after that.

Reading the letters from normal, decent mothers, brings the past sharply into my mind… what kind of mother seeing her child in pain in a hospital bed tries to make her suffer worse? I can’t read a column like this one without wanting to point out that just giving birth to a child doesn’t make a woman a mother. Some children don’t have mothers who hurt for them.

Karen, I just looked up Pancreatoblastoma. I think probably every parent’s worst nightmare is that their child will get an illness other people have to look up in the dictionary. I hope your grandbaby gets better.