Wisdom Teeth

Powdergirl's post about her recent dental misadventures reminded me: I've never told you guys about the time I got my wisdom teeth removed.

I was 21 years old, still living with my parents. Sitting in front of the TV one night, snacking on pretzels, I noticed that my teeth felt funny. Off to the dentist we went, and sure enough I had all four wisdom teeth on the advance. A date was set to have them extracted.

I fretted. I worried. I felt jealous of my friend Marcus- my 6'3" friend with the enormous jaw, who was able to let all of his wisdom teeth grow in and take their place as honoured participants in his mouth. I didn't want to face the surgery.

Be careful what you wish for. Two days before my appointment, I got a call from the oral surgeon's assistant. His father had died, so he was taking a week off. My surgery date was postponed.

By that time one of the teeth had become impacted. I was in pain. I ran a fever. I had to go on antibiotics. I was 21 years old and I was teething. It was increasingly uncomfortable. I counted down the hours to the surgery. Trust me, by the time the day came, no one could have kept me away from that appointment.

So there I was, a willing participant, lying back in the chair, sucking back big lungfuls of happy gas. I have vague memories of nasty things happening in my mouth, but I was so high at the time that I didn't care. The oral surgeon finished his work, packed my mouth full of gauze, and I was good to go.

I don't remember the next part very well, so I'll re-tell it from the point of view of my ex, who had come to help my mom deal with me after the procedure.

The scene: The surgeon's office is in a high-rise attached to a shopping mall. My mom had gone to get her car. It was my ex's job to steer me through the mall to the side exit where my mom would be waiting.

My ex is a big man, 6 feet tall, and, at the time, 200 pounds, all muscle. Not to mention he's black, in a neighbourhood where, at the time, almost everyone was white. He's usually as mild-mannered as a teddy bear, but you wouldn't know it to look at him. After a certain time of night cabbies, even the non-white ones, won't stop to pick him up.

So first of all they bring him into the recovery area, and there I am, high as a kite, chatty as can be, telling him all about the surgery and what it was like for me. Except my mouth is stuffed completely full of gauze. So I'm like Mwah mwah nhah uh uh uh! and gesticulating expressively, rolling my eyes and whatnot, and he's taking in exactly how blasted I am.

They get me up onto my feet. My ex has me by the elbows and guides me into the mall. Bear in mind what passersby are seeing here. A huge, scary-looking black guy, dressed all in black, is manhandling a tiny little white girl, limbs skinny as matchsticks, who's totally drugged out of her mind, and he's taking her... where? And what is that? Is that blood dripping down her chin?

Every few steps he hisses into my ear: "Keep your chin up! Chin up!" But I'm still floating in a cloud of nitrous. I can't remember what's happening, and my head is so heavy. Every few steps I start looking down at my feet again, and gory drool drips from my lower lip. He looks around nervously. Someone's probably called security. Surely half-a-dozen cops will come running any second now, surround us, take him down, cuff his hands behind his back.

Miraculously, we make it to the exit and into my mum's car without being confronted by the authorities. I'm free to lie down at home and swap my nitrous high for a bottle full of painkillers.

It wasn't quite a happy ending. I developed a dry socket, "characterized by severe pain following a tooth extraction". (If you're squeamish, don't click on the link.) I got to the bottom of that bottle of painkillers, and realized that after the last one wore off, I would have to throw myself out a very high window. I had never experienced such relentless, all-consuming pain before.

I paid one more visit to my oral surgeon, who tut-tutted, and then packed the painful spot with a tiny square of cotten soaked in oil of clove. The pain dissipated within minutes. It was an incredible relief. I also thought it was really cool that he was using a hundreds-of-years-old low-tech remedy even though we were surrounded by all the electric and pharmaceutical wizardry of the 20th century.

That night I ate spaghetti with meat sauce, flavoured strongly with the oil of clove leaching out of the little cotton dressing at the back of my mouth. I didn't care. It tasted like healing.