Wisdom Teeth

I went to the dentist last Friday, for my yearly check up, ( I know I should go more often, but I have an inherent dislike for dentists and other paid torturers) and I ended up having a tooth pulled out. How exactly this came to happen is still a mystery to me.  

All was going well (my bucal hygiene, while far from exemplary, is decent enough to not warrant much reprobation on the rare occasions it finds itself under the scrutiny of a professional) until my dentist asked me if there was anything in particular he could help with, and I had the misfortune to inform him that my wisdom teeth were on their way out. He immediately requested that I do an x ray, and before I knew it, I was wearing a lead jacket over my vital organs, which is always very reassuring, and biting down on a sterilized piece of plastic, trying very hard to stay immobile (I had been severely instructed to do so by a grim faced assistant), while some machine which seemed to have come straight out of an x men movie whirled around my head. Little did I know, this was only the beginning of my ordeal.  

Seated once again in the relative comfort of the dental chair, I was shown a black and white photo of what my dentist assured me were my pearly whites. The dentist pointed out my wisdom teeth (I only had three, which felt vaguely like an insult, an insinuation by nature that I'd never be as wise as the rest of the world) and he explained in some obscure medical jargon that they would have to be pulled out if I didn't want to end up with a smile akin to that of Ricky Gervais. I was considerably alarmed, not being very keen on letting people stab my gums with needles or cut them open with sharp objects resembling medieval torture devices, but stood brave in the face of peril, and even had the courage to suggest the organisation of an appointment at a later a date for the chirurgical butchering of my mouth. To this the dentist replied that we could instead start right away and excavate the wisdom tooth on the lower right side of my mouth. The procedure wouldn't take long, he told me, half an hour, forty five minutes tops. Fortunately, it so happened that he had no other appointments that particular afternoon. Upon hearing this, I desperately tried to come up with an excuse to flee the premises. I was not mentally prepared to have a tooth violently torn out of my mouth After all, this was far beyond what I had tacitly agreed to get into when I had made an appointment for an innocent check up. But the cunning dentist, probably accustomed to such protests, saw through my web of lies and more or less coerced me into undergoing the operation on the spot.  

First came the anesthesia: after a few strategic needle prods, I lost all feeling in the right side of my face, provoking in me an alternative interpretation of that shitty song by the Weeknd. Then, the horror movie started. Without any ceremony, the dentist began to cut and drill and hack his way to my wisdom tooth, alternately whistling to himself (I would like to say as a side note that any man capable of whistling while staring down the bloody butchered mouth of a terrified teenager is most certainly either insane or extremely stoned) and shouting at his assistant who seemed to have no idea what she was doing. She seemed even more mortified than I was, the poor girl; I was half tempted to squeeze her hand and tell her that everything would be alright.  

Halfway through the procedure a woman came in to wish the dentist a happy weekend. Turning his complete attention from my gaping bloody mouth to the rude intruder, he began to chat with her, as if he had all the time in the world. I was quite offended to be honest, at being so easily forgotten, but I didn't complain, mostly because I couldn't: the assistant was still frantically prodding my mouth with all sorts of bizarre humming instruments, making coherent elocution on my part nigh on impossible.  

The coup de grace came around half an hour in. The tooth had to be broken into fragments, as the dentist explained, so as to make the removal easier. Arming himself with what I can only describe as a glorified screw driver, he drilled hard into my jaw, provoking considerable pain despite the anesthesia, until I heard a nauseating crack. No person should have to hear their tooth break in half, it was a traumatic experience which will haunt me for years to come I'm sure. 

The rest of the operation, I'm glad to say, went relatively seamlessly. After an hour or so in total, I was sown up and in one piece, minus a tooth. When the dentist asked me how I felt, I smiled and did my best to put on a cool, unfazed facade, but I'm pretty sure the sweat marks on the back of my shirt betrayed me. The assistant asked me if I wanted to keep the bloody fragments of my tooth, I laughed at first, then realized she was being serious and told her that my Teeth Collection was large enough already. I walked home holding a bag of ice cubes to my jaw, which was supposed to prevent any swelling, feeling vaguely like Edward Norton in fight club. When my brother found me leaning against the kitchen counter holding the cold bag to my face, I told him I had gotten into a fight, and that he should see the other guy. He didn't believe me at first, but my lively recounting of the whole bloody brawl was enough to convince him. It was all quite amusing really, until an hour later the anesthesia wore off and I entered a world of pain, which no reasonable amount of aspirin could abate. I hardly ate anything at dinner, and went to bed angry and sore. I woke up with a large hot lump where my jaw used to be, the ice clearly hadn't been of much use, and a bad headache. The best part is though, I still have two more wisdom teeth firmly lodged in my upper gum. like a modern day Sisyphus I'm going to have to go through it all again in a week.