March of 2012:
One fine day, I was busy picking my tooth. Something had just lodged itself "behind" my molars. I had been experiencing this since long - and I was believing that there was a "hole" there.
I was taken to the dentist by my brother. Stanza after stanza from This is going to hurt just a little bit by Ogden Nash, that I had studied at school, came to my mind, as I sat with my mouth wide open on the dentist's chair. It was quite comfortable to sit, rather lay, on the chair till the dentist came around with all his tools and began examining my tooth.
Like Nash said in his poetry, "And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.", I just wanted to get off from there, never ever to return there again. A prescription for an X-ray was written and handed over. A "panoramic" X-Ray was taken - the dentist pondered over the X-Ray and broke the news to me. I'd require a "surgery" to extract my Wisdom Tooth!
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| Image from Pintrest/Pngtree.com |
What?
I had wisdom tooth?
The tooth were growing horizontally, instead of going vertical, and had already started crushing my molars. I had to have them surgically extracted.
Oh, Nash! How true were you about the experience on the Dentist's chair!
A week later, I was back on the chair - lying all vulnerable, with my mouth wide open again - an injection was administered on the gum. Minutes later, I felt I had lost a part of my lower face. I touched to see if my face was still intact - it was. The anesthetic was slowly blocking off my senses. The Surgeon (an Oral-Maxillofacial Surgeon?) began working on my jaw. I could feel him using an impactor - something like an air hammer - to slowly break my malformed teeth into smaller bits.
Given its location, and the way it had broken, the surgeon had no options of extracting it as a single piece. I could feel the taste of the tooth being powdered. There was unhindered water supply to the mouth to remove the debris. Once in a while he stopped the hammer, washed the debris out, and then continued again. This continued for quite some time. I think it took over an hour, or even more. The suture and the needle came out a little later - the wound was sewn up, and he showed me the remnants of what was my Wisdom at the end of the procedure.
The pain from the surgery started coming out about a hour after the procedure. There was unbearable pain - a goof up by the attendant at the pharmacy meant I hadn't received a pain medicine (we love calling them as NSAID - En Said - A Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug) at all! I had my own stock which I used to beat the pain! We returned to the dentist the next day - who called out the mistake by the drug store attendant - I being a pharmacist, overlooked this error myself! The dentist checked the 'wound' for any surgical site infections and let me return home to return later for removal of sutures. My face was all swollen - I hadn't heeded to his advice of Ice application. I regretted this decision - because everytime I had to open my mouth, I could feel every nerve transmitting back back to my brain. I still remember the struggle I went through to brush my teeth the day after the surgery - it was a royal pain to spit out water after washing!
Removal of sutures was again a painful procedure, followed by the second set of surgeries a couple of weeks later. The entire scene returns - mouth opened wide, jaw locked down below, a local anesthesia and equipment working inside my mouth. I felt like they were building a road inside my mouth, blasting off teeth and flattering the base. I could feel the taste of my tooth being blasted into bits and it felt like they were using marble cutters in my mouth. Water was being pumped in to cool the 'cutter heads' of the equipment the surgeon used - my mind was filled with images of a mason cutting slabs of stone for flooring work! It was a very similar situation!
I wouldn't remember how long it took - but it surely took long enough. After the blasting and flattering, the surgeon stitched up the wound and let me go home. The best part of the surgery was that my food after the surgery was made entirely of lovely delicious milkshakes and juices my sister(-in-law) made at home! A few weeks past the surgery, the sutures were all gone, and the wound had healed. Then came the day I had to get cementation done in my mouth to patch up a tooth that was damaged by one of the bad wisdom I had. That was perhaps my last visit to the dentist.
Quoting Nash again, "And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen."
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