Wisdom Teeth

This sucks. No, I take that back, this doesn’t suck, because if I suck or sip anything then I might disturb my clots and that could lead to a very painful phenomenon known as empty socket syndrome. Not that I’d notice the difference; really, as I am already in way more pain then I am comfortable being conscious for.

I had my Wisdom Teeth taken out less than a day ago. So far, I see no benefit to this.

It was a funny little day, yesterday. It started with my mother picking Gareth and me up, dropping my little sister off at school, going back to my little sisters school because she forgot something, and finally arriving at the oral surgeon’s. We live in a small town, so thank whatever powers that control the universe of dentistry that our only oral surgeon is good at what he does. This is balanced out by giving him a pair of rude, condescending, harpies for secretaries.

“You didn’t get the paperwork in the mail? My, aren’t you slow, stupid and ugly.”

Has anyone ever noticed that waiting rooms have the worst music ever? I have long believed this to be a sinister plot, and I feel that yesterday proves this. There we were, sitting in the magazine strewn waiting room for a half hour, being forced to listen to the worst offerings that modern music has to offer, when finally a good song comes on. I recognized it as one of Pink’s earlier songs. It had a good rhythm, though I can’t for the life of me remember the title. Just when Gareth and I start to tap our fingers, the song halted mid-introduction, and an ugly sounding pop song from the eighties starts playing instead.

As Gareth said at that moment: Madness

Anyways, I was trundled away to the back room and finally got to exchange a handful of words with the surgeon. He at least was nice and answered a few question. I was nervous as hell, this being my first surgery of any kind. Funny thing was, the main comfort I had was that the nurse looked exactly like Nurse Kelly from MASH.

Whatever works, I guess

The last thing I remember is telling the surgeon to make sure I was unconscious before cutting on me. He assured me that they wouldn’t and then I passed out.

I woke up fully conscious with a numb face and a mouth full of cotton. According to Garth, I looked like a happy chipmunk because of the swelling and the gauze pushing my face into something resembling a smile.

Photograph of me after coming out of the operating room

And then we went home. Well, we sung by my sister’s school again to drop off some forms. And we got my medication from the pharmacy. Then we went home, after sitting in the car for thirty minutes while waiting for the tow truck to get out of our way.

Remember how I said we lived on a mountain? Well, some idiot went off the cliff. My mom made the mistake of asking the cop if we could just scuttle by, since I was recovering from surgery. The tow truck guys had barely begun to crane the car up, and we could have easily made it past them. She should have asked them, not the cop who showed up five minutes after us, and as far as I could tell did nothing but stand around and look like a douche-bag.

He responded to her question with a dismissive little, “Yes, well, we all have reason why we want to get home,”

This is the reason why he wanted to get home

I mean, I can sort of understand not making an exception for a surgery patient, I guess, but he could at least have been polite about it. He then proceeded to tell my mother that “there is a hospital down the street.” Which wasn’t even true, the hospital was on the other side of town. I have a theory that most cops aren’t born, they are grown in cloning vats from the DNA of a gorilla and some jerk-off named Bruce.

The origin of our police force

But I digress. Eventually, we did get home. I was so fucking thirsty. I hadn’t had anything to drink all morning because to the anesthesia, plus my mouth had been open for forty-five minutes while it was being sliced open.

Anyone who has ever tried to drink with a numb face before knows what is about to happen. I got soaked.

Finally, finally, I got settled down. My mom, worried but satisfied that I was okay, left, and Gareth and I played some video games.

Then the anesthesia wore off.

Want to know the worst part about how the body processes anesthesia? The de-numbing goes outward to the end of the nerves, so now I found myself in excruciating, sob racking pain, and my face was still numb.

Gareth ended up on the phone trying to explain to the bimbo secretaries that I hadn’t eaten anything yet because they had said to wait until the bleeding stopped, and that I needed to take the pain pill anyways. They just kept repeating that they had said to eat at least an hour after the surgery so that I could take the pill before the anesthesia wore off, and no, of course I couldn’t take it on an empty stomach.

At last, Gareth’s godfather, alias: Ocho, got me to eat some yogurt. I took my pill and managed to whimper myself to sleep.

Later, when my face had finally stop being numb, we watched Read Or Die, followed by Tank Girl, which made me feel much better.

The universal cure-all

Later: It’s a couple of day’s after, and I’m getting ready to post this. Status-wise, I’m finally starting to feel more like a human being and less like a blowfish that somebody kicked in the face. Why they would do that to a poor little blowfish is beyond me.

Why?

This is a good thing, because I kind of have to go to school tomorrow and I really didn’t want to do that with an inflated face. I’m finally eating things that resemble food and not liquefied colors, but MY GOD, I would murder someone for the ability to eat a steak sandwich.

This Guy. I’ll murder him

Apparently I’m actually doing a lot better than someone who just had four wisdom teeth taken out, two of which were impacted. That’s cold comfort when you’re as pitiful as I am in the face of long term pain and discomfort. WORST SPRING BREAK EVER.