When I was 16, I made the trek back to Dodge City to attend my wisdom tooth removal surgery. Unfortunate events occurred (read: stomach flu) and, in fear of me throwing up on my surgeon, my surgery was canceled. This did not appear to be a huge deal because over the next few years, all four of my wisdom teeth grew in miraculously straight and it appeared to be a sign from God that I should never have oral surgery again. More on that in a minute.
Over the past week, my lower right wisdom tooth has been aching a little. Now you need to understand that I am very OCD when it comes to the health of my mouth and teeth. You don't go through surgery and four years of braces and expect to come through without a little PTSD. I brush my teeth twice a day, every day and on days my teeth feel a little grimy, three times a day. I floss, I use mouthwash. I inspect my teeth for possible cavities often. I am very very careful with my teeth. So to have a sore mouth caused by a tooth is a major freak out moment for me. The first day I inspected it, it looked like my gums were a little swollen back there, so I lightly massaged them with my brush a few times that day and for the following day. It got a little better, so I stopped worrying about it. Then yesterday, I woke up with the whole right side of my face lightly swollen and I was again worried. This time when I looked in my mouth, the impossible appeared to have happened. My gums are not swollen, my wisdom tooth is receding! And it's receding crookedly, pushing the side of it into my jawline and cheek. On my lunch break yesterday I called a dental office and asked if this was, indeed, possible. Apparently it is because wisdom teeth are wicked little creatures with minds of their own. So now I have to go get all my wisdom teeth thoroughly examined and quite possibly removed. And if the crazy tooth doesn't come up back up, that will require oral surgery. Which I HATE. And here's why.
When I was preparing to get braces, Dr Ackerman realized that my mouth (much like the rest of my body) was tiny. Too small, in fact, to fit all the teeth that were growing in. So I had to set an appointment to have two bottom teeth removed and two top teeth removed. That would have been no big deal, but my top teeth were indignant. They stood their ground and refused to move, stating "we are too cool to leave this mouth." In normal person speak, this means that the roots of my teeth were actually hooked into my sinus and to merely pull them would resort in more surgeries than needed because then they would need to repair my sinus region. It was ultimately decided that I would need to have surgery to remove these teeth, no big deal, right? Wrong. I was terrified of surgery. What if I never woke up? Nonetheless, mum's final word was law in our house, and she said my teeth were being removed surgically.
The day of the surgery, I got to skip school (yay!) and on the way to the clinic, I asked mum if we could go to the library and sonic afterwards. She kind of did this little half laugh, and said sure, if I felt up to it after the surgery. I took this as a yes, because why wouldn't I feel like it?
Skipping all the boring details of signing in and getting to the good stuff, they hooked me up to all the tubes and a nurse took a nasty looking long needle and inserted it into my IV and asked me to count backwards from 10. The last number I remember was 9, so that was probably a sign of the future issues I had.
I am assuming (and would not like to hear otherwise) that the surgery itself went fine. It was the waking me afterwards that caused problems. As in, I wouldn't wake up. They went out and got my mum, and from what I am told, it even took her some time to get me conscious.
The first thing I remember was the clouds on the ceiling, with the cowboys and indians chasing each other. I tried to tell my mum about them, but there was so much gauze in my mouth, and it just kind of hung upen and wouldn't close and the drugs were definitely prohibiting any real human speak. Also I might mention there were no cowboys or indians on the ceiling. Or clouds. I am pretty sure it was just a plain white ceiling when I was put under and I seriously doubted they painted all of that in the hour I was down for the count.
Me: Mum, look, the cowboys are chasing the indians in the sky
Mum: umm...un huh, sweetie, you need to wake up. Can you open your eyes a little more?
Me: No, my eyes are fine. Do you see the cowboys?
Mum: That's nice, honey. Now we are going to get you home, okay? I have to leave for a second. I am going to get the car. I will be right back. (my drug addled brain did not recognize this sentence as actual words so I had no idea what my mum was doing)
Me: But the indians! And the clouds!
At this point, my mother had left the room to pull the van around to the side of the building so that I didn't freak out the rest of the patients in the waiting room with my crazy mouth face. The two nice male dental assistants helped me walk (read: basically carried me) to the side door, where my mother was waiting. Unfortunately for them, they also had a supplies van waiting there as well, and I couldn't see my mum's van at first, so I freaked out on them as much as a ninety pound pre-teen girl could freak out on two physically fit mid twenties men. I was sure they were kidnapping me for ransom and I just couldn't allow that. My mum hurried over to calm me down and with a little bit of struggle, we got me safely loaded into the waiting vehicle and on my way home.
Everything was fine until we passed the library.
Me: Mum! Where are you going? The library, you said, I feel fine!
Mum: No, Angie, you don't. You don't make any sense, your entire face is swollen and you can't even walk on your own. We are just going home.
Me: But you said! You said, you said you said you said..." (This was like a whine sob word mix)
Mum: No.
And again, mum's final word was law, so I shut up except for some halfhearted sniffles. She did, however, take me to Sonic and get me a sprite and also a chocolate shake with fries so I could mush them around in my mouth. Later we would find out that they gave me too much anethesia for my weight, which is why I was so unfunctional and hard to wake up, but the whole experience traumatized me.
And this has been the long winded reason why I do NOT want to have another surgery, yet I am afraid I will have to. Stupid teeth.
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