good doctors have to be brave and tough about blood and pain, right?

am i doctor material? you be the judge.

i visited my dentist a few weeks ago, after nearly 3 months of self-maintenance of my retainers. after the traditional prophylaxis, cleaning, and other stuff, we got to talking about how to further improve my dental aesthetic (in other words, my teeth alignment). both my upper and lower jaw suffered from overcrowding of teeth, which my dentist said might be due to wisdom teeth developing below the surface of my gums. she said that my condition might worsen over the years, since my lower front teeth already have a pretty severe sungki and my upper teeth can't perfectly flatten out due to space constraints. and so at her advice, i opted to have my wisdom teeth extracted, scheduled for the 6th of april.

jump around a month later, to yesterday. classes had been over for 2 days already, so i spent the better parts of the morning just lounging around, watching tv and playing with the ps2. i never really put much thought into the surgery i would undergo in a few hours, probably distracted by relaxation and not really worrying about pain and whatnot. around 4, my dad came home to take me to the dentist. we arrived on time and waited for over an hour for the dental surgeon to come, the entire period with me still nonchalant about the whole thing. considering i hadn't had surgery aside from a sty operation when i was a year old and my circumcision over 8 years ago, it's surprising i didn't feel any more distressed.

when the surgeon finally came, we got around to taking 2 x-rays of my left and right lower wisdom teeth. he came back with the film, and with not-so-good news. according to the x-ray, i suffered from a horizontal impaction, where the wisdom teeth were growing on their side, perfectly horizontal with respect to my other molars, which grew vertically. this would make their extraction more complicated (or as my surgeon put it euphemistically, more challenging) because the whole tooth can't be removed as one big piece from within the bone, since the window to be made in the bone can't be made that big. at the least, it would make my surgery take a bit longer than usual. taking all that news in, i braced myself and took a seat in the chair.

time check: 5:30 pm. first came a topical anesthesia, to prevent me from feeling the pain of the local anesthesia being injected into my gums. next was a minute-long gargle with medical-grade antiseptic mouthwash (less painful that listerine, i mentioned to my surgeon) then the power tools came out. at this point, i went into a state of sensory discrimination, where i closed my eyes for the duration of the surgery and instead relied on other stimuli to tell me what was going on and to distract me from the surgery. i did this knowing that i would be much more calm and comfortable with the surgery if i didn't know what sort of horrendous oral torture devices were being inserted into my mouth. the one time i took a peek, at the edge of my vision i saw a metal spatula-like device whose tip was drenched in blood, and did that teach me a lesson. the anesthesia seemed to work properly, but when pressure and discomfort did come, i kept my reaction down to grasping down on my hands, bracing my legs, and letting out a little tiny wince.

it took all my wits about me to keep calm and to keep breathing normally, and not to allow the sensory cues i received to form gruesome mental images. *note: most of these are exaggerated and based on primitive predictions based on the sensations i received.* a slight pressure on the gums could have been the scalpel cutting through the thin layer of tissue covering the teeth. tiny taps and chinks, a chisel going through the bone. the characteristic whirr, a drill making its way around or through the tooth. strong leverage, the spatula-like thing prying out my tooth, or the remaining chunks of it. a strong pulling force, pliers grasping and tugging on the larger chunks of crown enamel embedded in bone and tissue. the feel of a soft material, gauze stuffed in my mouth to absorb the blood. the sound of suction, rivers of blood being drained from my jaw. a splish-splash and the trickle of cool drops of liquid on my face, *i hoped was* water used to clean the area out. strings running across my lips and teeth, the sutures being sewn into the cavity. a final stuffing of gauze, instructions to bite down as hard as i can, the chair going back up to vertical, it was over. time check: 6:30 pm.

my doctor asked if i wanted to see my mouth after all the work, and i hastily declined the offer. he then offered to show me the tooth taken out of me, which i accepted. he washed it down, and brought it back. looking back at me from my surgeon's hand were 2 segments of a humongous molar, each piece nearly a centimeter long, with the crown still attached to a random piece of pinkish flesh. my doctor described it to me, that the two pieces didn't exactly fit together since the middle part was pulverized (nice word he used) by the diamond drill. he said that was the part which took a long time, where he kept on returning to his tool station and adjusting the drill bit. so glad i didn't have to see that. estimating the part which he *pulverized*, the whole tooth would have been around 3/4 of an inch long. the little monster, growing and living beneath my gums. who would've thought?

after receiving a few instructions from my surgeon, an ice pack for the swelling, a few medications, and scheduling for the right wisdom tooth (i know, going through it again) and removal of the sutures, we finally went home. the local anesthesia still hadn't worn off, and the feeling was strange. the whole lower left area of my face, from my left ear to my chin, was numb and twitchy. along with the pain, the anesthesia took out all signals which said my lower jaw was still present. the whole mass just weighed down on my face, like a ten-pound force pulling down. my tongue was tingly, my cheek engorged, my lips swollen, and it felt as if i had lost all the teeth on my left side.

the doctor said to remove the gauze after around 20-30 minutes since the sutures would have taken over by then, so when we arrived i went to my bathroom to dispose of the gauze. upon removing the wad stuffed in my cheek, i rinsed my mouth out a bit, and out gushed pools upon pools of red liquid. i spit out a few times, and out a few times sprayed fresh, viscous blood. it actually made a gruesome scene on my sink and mirror, like a murder just took place and i had tried to dispose of the body down the drain. around this bloody episode i started to go into a panic mode, the blood wouldn't stop flowing from the wound and thoughts of drowning in my own plasma and cell aggregate drifted into my mind. i calmed down, applied more ice to the area, kept my mouth shut (to prevent blood and saliva dribbling and drooling down my chin) and prayed for superior clotting abilities to stop the blood flow. luckily, it did.

2 hours passed by with me lying down on the sofa to prevent aggravating the bleeding when sensation started returning to my left face. my cheek felt smaller, my lips thinner, my tongue smooth and untingly, my teeth felt rooted in my gums again. but along with the normal responses came another normal response: pain. a sharp pain growing at the back of my mouth. a pain the anesthesia and the ice pack couldn't hide anymore. wincing and groaning from the agony, i took in a capsule of mefenamic acid, got my ice pack refilled, then retired to bed without dinner or general hygiene, trying to shake off the dull, stinging sensation and lulling myself to sleep. i woke up this morning, the extreme pain gone but a dull pressure still present in the area. looked in the mirror and as expected by the doctor, a swollen lower left cheek, like a bad smack to the face or a gigantic mosquito bite. simple things like licking my lips, washing my face, opening my mouth, and swallowing cause general discomfort in the area. a few more hours with the ice pack and i hope it goes away just as quickly as it came in.

with that, i would like to thank topical and local anesthesia and their inventors for shielding me from the unimaginable pain. the humans' lack of peripheral vision, so i wouldn't have to see the grisly sight that was my mouth, 92.3 fm for providing the background music during the surgery, to which i actually jammed to even under the anesthesia, gauze, and implements, and gave my surgeon quite a chuckle. to my surgeon, for having a nice, comforting voice which incessantly asked "is it ok?" and frequently threw out the comments "that was good" and "perfect". to ice cream, the perfect cool treat i am obliged to enjoy after the surgery. and now a little bashing. no thanks to my genetics for having to give me wisdom teeth in the first place, and even more so for making them grow horizontally. so much for that.

during the course of my surgery, my surgeon mentioned to me; "you've got a tough little baby here. just won't give in." i'd like to respond to that now:

"well, he's got a tough little daddy too."