Thursday, February 23, 2012

Wimp

Anybody who has had their wisdom teeth removed, or else knows someone who's had their wisdom teeth removed, has probably heard a horror story or two about broken roots and otherwise terribly nasty things that go wrong when wisdom teeth get extracted. Luckily, mine came out without a hitch. Thirty minutes was the total length of time it took for all three--I was back in our apartment within an hour--but even so, I was shaking so hard at the end that I had trouble with my bike lock.

Even though most of it was painless--honestly, the most painful part was the anesthesia--I was still on edge for the entire procedure. When I was little, I had terrible cavities in my baby teeth, which warranted their removal. Our dentist wouldn't believe me when, while he was yanking out my teeth, I started crying because it hurt so badly. He'd given me the anesthetic, and it wasn't supposed to hurt--so therefore, it had to be in my head. Fortunately, this time, they believed me when I said it still hurt, and they gave me an extra shot. Unfortunately, this time, it meant that the anesthesia took twice a long to wear off.

But I kept expecting it to hurt, and it wasn't until they took off the cloth covering my eyes (ostensibly to protect my eyes from sharp pointy objects, but also because dental patients are like birds--if you can't see it, it can't hurt you) that I was able to relax. Some things just don't get better, even twenty years later.

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