A Little Less Wise

So last Friday I had the pleasure of having all four of my wisdom teeth removed. The bottom two were horizontally impacted (which is bad) and the top two were slightly impacted. Basically, the dentist told me that I should have had this procedure done about ten years ago. Of course, ten years ago I didn't have any dental insurance. Which is why I've waited until now. In case anyone is wondering about timing, the earlier the better. I hurt.

I created a little photo-journalistic trek through my surgery and recovery. *WARNING* Not all of the pictures are pretty... nor am I pretty. In any of them, really.

This is Friday morning, pre-operation and normal face (non-chipmunk).
Daniel graciously agreed to give me a ride there, on his way to work. We stopped by for some MC worship (which I forgot to take a picture of). Upon entering the sanctuary we found Sam Mello in his birthday suit.

Then on to the doctors office, where I waited for a bit and made friends with a strange looking fish there. Wherever I put my face to look into the tank, he would swim right up to me and stare at me. His little mouth made an O, like he was constantly in a state of amazement.

It's time. They strapped me down to the chair (literally, so I wouldn't strike anyone while unconscious), put a hair cap on me, a cuff on my arm (that automatically measured my blood pressure every five minutes), some electrodes under my shirt to measure my heart rate (the monitor went boop-boop-boop with my pulse), and a little clamp on my finger. A tube clamped onto my nose blew oxygen into my lungs. And I waited. I tried to see how slowly I could make my heart beat by controlling my breathing. 55 bpm. Then the doctor came in all in a hurry ("Hey, sorry I'm late, how are you?"), tied off my arm with a rubber tube and stuck an IV in. I had discovered from the nurse that they were doing fourteen extractions that day. Fourteen! "I'm giving you something to help you relax," was how he phrased it, and I noticed my heart rate went booping a little faster. They engaged me in conversation about the scar on my arm, and I knew they were keeping me distracted, getting me to talk. "I put my arm through a window." "Why didn't you just open the window?" "Well, it was actually a french door, and I was trying to push it open." "I once ran into a glass sliding door and shattered it." "I did that too, but I bounced off. My heart is beating faster." And by that time I was feeling very relaxed, and a bit sleepy, so I stopped talking, and woke up, and it was done. My mouth had several sea-sponges crammed in it and my cheeks scraped against the wall. They helped me into a wheelchair, Miss Bonnie appeared there, and they wheeled me out to her car. I numbly realized it was my first time in her Mini. Here's a photo from shortly after I got to the Fretwells, where I spent my first day of recuperation.

A lovely look at an extraction site.

Here's day two of recuperation.

And my third day... my most painful day, and my ugliest to date.

Farewell, oh my little wisdom teeth!