Getting My Wisdom Teeth Out
I lost my wisdom. It happened Tuesday morning at approximately 8:20--so much for a precise time like being executed at high noon. I had to get all four of them out. Most people get their wisdom teeth out because there’s usually not enough space for them to fit or once they’re in, it’s hard to keep them clean because they’re the farthest to reach. Mine hadn’t even poked through my gum yet which is the best time to get them because the tooth roots haven’t grown in.
I was a little uneasy about going under an anesthetic; I’ve never had surgery before. I think people consider getting your wisdom teeth out as having surgery, but I don’t think so. I wasn’t in a hospital. I wasn’t in a hospital gown. I sat in a dentist’s chair. Plus, they told me I was going under a mild anesthetic so that I would still respond to their voices like, “Open your mouth,” even though I wouldn’t remember any of it afterwards.
So, I showed up wearing short sleeves, no contacts, and no painted nails like they asked though I don’t remember why. I had three different people at three different times ask me when was the last time I had something to eat or drink. First, it was the lady at the waiting room desk, then an assistant once I was in the chair having my legs strapped down, and finally by the doctor dentist guy, I’m sure they like to be called oral surgeons, himself. “At about 11 o’clock last night,” I replied to each.
As my legs were being strapped to the chair by some random lady I never saw again, the assistant was telling me what to expect to happen. A nurse would come in and prep my arm for the IV. She would tie a band above my elbow, rub alcohol on the spot, tell me to make a fist and then the doctor would be the one to stick it in me.
I didn’t close my eyes, but I didn’t look either. “We got a little one there,” the doctor said referring to my wimpy vein. I felt the prick and then I looked. The doctor had just stuck the anesthetic in the IV. It was clear and gel-like. He told me I’d begin to feel the effects after about a minute. I think it was sooner than a minute. I felt like I was gonna fall over. It was such a weird sensation. Growing up, I’d always thought when one gets “put to sleep” for surgery, that’s exactly what it feels like. I thought I was just going to feel tired, yawn, and drift off. Nope. It was an odd sense of dizziness and disorientation. I also had an increased awareness of gravity. That’s the only way I can think to put it. It wasn’t like I was being pulled to the floor by G-force like on those spinning rides at amusement parks where the floor drops and people are stuck to the wall. It just felt like I was a little heavier in the chair.
The next thing I could fully remember was sitting on the couch at home playing a movie for the second time because I couldn’t remember watching it the first time.
You wrote this very well and kept my attention the whole time... I also had my wisdom teeth out, but not all at once. But, unfortunately, they had to do both the uppers, then the lowers. This was back in the olden golden days at the University of Michigan Dental School where I supplied their need for a guinea pig and got first the uppers out for $7.00 a tooth and about a month later the lowers for $13.00 a tooth. They used local anesthesia and learned not to give me codeine, since it made me sick.
ReplyDeleteBy the second visit, I'd found a temorary place to live and was not homeless, sleeping on the couch at the Union, as with the first time. Good thing, too, cuz the bottom left was impacted and growing sideways! It took morphine to help ease the pain that time.
All in all, it was not a bad experience. I learned a lot and was grateful to have had it done without too much inconvenience to my squalid life style. I also felt useful to the cute, young dental students as they learned how first to extract uppers, then lowers from my tiny, little mouth!