A Weekend In Hell

I never realized that my life could change so dramatically from one of good health and joie de vivre to yet another of pain and agony, all within a week's time. In my previous post I'd written about what a pleasant Mother's Day weekend I'd had, but I guess I'd spoken too soon! This weekend has just been an agonizing hell for me, and by that I mean a bone-chilling ride to the heights of pain, and an excruciating, intolerable one at that. It has made me question the wisdom of having my wisdom teeth extracted and willingly subjecting myself to torture. Every time I went for my regular cleaning, my dentist prevailed upon me to have the wisdom teeth removed from my lower jaw, the upper ones already having been removed while I was in California some years ago. Since the lower ones had nothing to grind against in the upper jaw, and since they were beginning to press on the teeth next to them, I realized that the time was imminent to have them extracted.

Friday, May 13th, was my day off towards my IPD (Individual Professional Development) and since I could work from home that day and didn't have to teach a class, I decided to have the teeth extractions done the previous evening, so I would have three days in a row on the weekend to recover from the procedure. Boy, was I mistaken! As it is, I'm petrified of the dentist's chair. The lopsided view of things from my inclined, head down position, accompanied by the shrill sound of all the dental equipment around me, always gives me the creeps. And throw in the paper I had to sign with a bulleted list of all the things that could potentially go wrong during the extractions - from permanent nerve damage to a broken jaw to a heart attack - not a pretty picture at all! With my frozen jaw and an inability to communicate, I still managed to mumble, "Oh, that's a scary list!", and the dental assistant cheerily replied, "Don't worry. That happens to just one in a million patients!" With nary a moment for second thoughts, I signed the paper like an automaton and resigned myself to whatever will be! Well, the left wisdom tooth eased off quite well, but the right one stubbornly refused to say goodbye. The good doctor exerted all the pressure he could to pry it off, and almost broke my jaw in the process. Panic began to set in as he dug in and tugged and pulled, and I began to pray in earnest around the third minute or so. "God, please let me not be that one in a million, and let me not die in the dentist's chair," I wailed silently, and mercifully at last, the tooth did come out!

It was then that my experience in hell began. Once I regained sensation in my jaw, it was as if every nerve in every tooth and every single area of my mouth was out to punish me. The searing, throbbing, pulsating, agonizing pain has to be experienced to be believed, and I have been howling in agony these past three days. I was not supposed to eat rice or anything with seeds in it, not even whole grain bread, so it was just chicken broth and yogurt for the first two days. Since there was nothing substantial in my stomach, the Advil I'd been asked to take was burning a hole in my stomach and intestines - a whole different pain altogether. From a silent, cheek-swollen mute, I slowly transformed into a whining, snapping harpie! "Mom, can you please not make that noise? It's so annoying!" said the kid. "Wait till you go through the same thing. Then you'll know," I snapped back at him. I woke the husband up with my moaning, and kept him up at night with all my pain-induced tossing and turning.

When things began to get out of hand, I called my dental centre to ask for pain medication. My dentist was away in Victoria for the weekend, and after the assistants tracked him down, he was kind enough to call the pharmacy and fill in my prescription of antibiotics and painkillers. He has called twice since then to see how I'm doing. It still hurts, but I'm sure I'll recover in time to teach my class tomorrow. Thank God I had only two remaining wisdom teeth and they're both gone now! I'm happy the teeth are out, but I'd be happier if the wisdom remained after all! Which brings me again to the question of why it's called a wisdom tooth after all, and why on earth are dentists so hell-bent on ridding us of our wisdom! Answer, anyone? :)