The Whole Tooth & Nothing But The Tooth

I had a wisdom tooth extraction earlier this week. Don’t haha (or heehaw) at me, you merciless thugs! Everyone I’ve been talking about this, before the appointment, has insisted on regaling me with their own horror stories.

My cheeks swelled up like a chipmunk’s and then someone came and pinched my cheeks affectionately! – @shaaqT (Facebook friends, there’s even a photo illustrating this moment at twestival; check out her demonstration and my horrified expression!)

I couldn’t feel one side of my face for a month! – nameless person at twestival

My tooth was embedded in a bone so the dentist has to drill it out! – @melodylaila (which comment lost me my appetite and I had to look away from the delicious tray I had amassed at Candies)

Mine cracked and left behind half inside the gum that had to be root-canaled out! – Don’t even remember who (the ghastly ghost!)

Can you tell that I have really gleefully horrible friends?! But as Baz Luhrman (playing in the background) says, advice is a form of nostalgia. I will dispense with my own now.

The extraction itself was relatively simple in my case. That’s not compared to the horrendous accounts of my friends, that is harking back to my childhood of frequent earaches (my ENT specialist really should have given us a ‘Preferred Patient’ embossed card) and other pains in the vicinity of the crunchers. I’ve had cavities, numerous extraction and the cherry on the cake – braces!

Sometime remind me to tell you about the horrors of being an orthodontist’s patient. Orthodontists are like dentists, only worse, a hundred, twenty-thousand times worse!! Mine had a sense of humour as well, which is really the worst thing for a person to have, especially when he has both his hands inside your mouth and is leering over your scared face because you can’t laugh at his jokes. What’s more, you’re afraid he’ll be offended if you don’t laugh and he might give you an inadvertent nip with his evil-looking pliers…on the wrong tooth!

And then there is the orthodontist’s office, strewn as it is with foul-looking casts of other people’s teeth structures, sculpted in green plaster of paris. It boggles the mind, how he manages to identify which one is yours and fish it out from amidst that dental array. Never mind the horrors of mouth-roof-plates (to ensure that the teeth did not go back to being Bugs Bunny-like on removal of braces) and the *shudder shudder* torture of rubber bands (hooked on to lower-back teeth braces, brought forward to string onto top-front teeth). Imagine the agony of one of those rubber bands snapping right inside your damn mouth!!

Suffice to say I have gruesome stories of my own regarding tooth-doctors and their ilk. Which is why I say I survived this extraction reasonably well. Except I started burning up with a fever almost the instant I stopped taking painkillers and antibiotics. Hmph, I never thought I’d have to sing “You give me fever” to a piece of calcium my own body created!!!

Anyway, I’m going to be brave soldier with stiff upper lip and all (not that I have much of a choice, all local-anaesthetic things considered…). It tickles me to think of having a wisdom tooth extraction coincide with my hitting 30 and all the resolutions that have followed. I was a mature adult at 16, an ambitious go-getter by 21, I never did the silly-young-thing thing. I feel like my body is also accepting and giving me the full g0-ahead. Now that I’ve lost my wisdom, I can get down to the business of being all silly and giddy-headed with gusto!!

Oh and by the way I have another appointment next week to extract the other tooth. I’m still vaguely confused over whether we have two or four wisdom teeth. I read an article online that said that excessive calcium could create even more wisdom teeth, the highest record being someone with 12 wisdom teeth!!! Gaaaaah, all the more reason to be silly, giddy-headed and errm…..avoid milk like the plague!