Week 18 - Wisdom

Solomon sought it, our parents instilled it, and this past week I lost it. That's right folks, I had my wisdom teeth taken out just before Christmas, and that will be the bulk of this post. As it turns out, there's not really a lot of stories out there about wisdom teeth surgeries that tell you how it really was. I was pretty nervous going into my surgery and hopefully this post can help someone else down the road be a little more comfortable with what is typically a very simple procedure.

My wisdom teeth story really starts back in middle school when I was scanned for braces work. My orthodontist tried to be proactive about having my teeth removed, but it wasn't until after the braces work was done that they were even in far enough to be eligible for removal. High school brings along many schedule conflicts, and so does 4 years away from home. Next thing I knew I was off my parental insurance and not about to spend money saved for whiskey on a surgery I kept hoping wouldn't need performed. Then I was married and we could justify the expense. However, my dentist and my wife kept after me and we were finally able to get it knocked out over this break.

To tell you what a schemer my wife is, she scheduled my teeth removal (with my approval, sadly) over the Christmas week so that "I wouldn't be able to get fat eating so much over the holidays". Nice lady, eh? Well, she was pretty nice, because she dedicated a lot of time and effort into taking care of my post-surgery and she deserves a lot of love and praise for that because I was neither a perfect patient nor was it on her top choice of things to do with her free time.

Despite some frustrating conflicts with Romney campaign traffic and a cancelled first consult appointment, we did finally get a consult in back just before the election. They took my weight, oxidation (which no nurse could explain how that measurement worked, they thought I wanted to just know what it meant), blood pressure, and then showed me a video to try and scare me about every possible accident that could happen which I was signing off on my ability to sue over. The paperwork out of the way, I walked out of the office with a prescription for generic Vicodin and no commitment to a surgery. And they wonder how kids get illegal prescription drugs! But in our case, we did follow up on the appointment and showed up bright and early on Thursday morning for what I perceived as my death sentence.

Now I should preface my fears by explaining that I am not afraid of pain. My first broken bone came at 5, and I never slowed down after that. Cuts, crashes, blood, brains and bone were the symbols of my toughness and superiority over my fragile peers. Pain scares me none, but the idea of passing away by accident while under anesthetic and never getting to say goodbye to the love of my life scared the everliving shit out of me, and no assurance of the irrationality of this image could soothe me. The day before the surgery I ate everything I wanted as if it would be my last meal, finishing with some Taco Bell after family choir practice (a different story for a different time).

Laughing gas is a joke, and not in a good way. I'm convinced after my surgery that this is just a ploy to make people feel better, because it has no effect on me except a headache and I wished they hadn't wasted our time with it. The nurse kept glancing at the other as if to ask if it was really working, and kept upping the dose. Nitrous oxide is a long name for "no air", and what it really does is thin out the oxygen supplied to you so that you get light-headed. I'm a pretty "big boy" as they put it later, and so I have a capacity to absorb large doses of things with limited effect. Such was the case with the gas until they upped to a quantity where I wanted to throw up. Since they actually didn't want me knocked out with it, they turned it off and I quickly started to feel better again. No worries.

Next we headed to the IV and sensors. They stuck the needle in just like a pro-nurse with the Red Cross and hit me with amnesiac so I wouldn't remember pre/post surgery fading (or so she said), and general anaesthetic. Again - it took me a while to go down. So we chatted about my work at OSU, my plans for eating when we got out and I joked with her about "carb-ing up" so that I wouldn't have to eat for days as I healed. Unfortunately, I didn't preface this joke with commentary on my field of study, so she took me quite seriously and proceeded to lecture me about the foolishness of that statement. We talked about this, and then I knew I was gonna go out. I closed my eyes, and woke up to the nurse and my wife talking to me.

Sadly, these are not mine. Credit to islandcrisis.

Despite my best pleading, I was unable to convince them to let me have my teeth. I'll probably be bitter about that for a while. I had her convinced to send them home with me, but my wife assured her we really didn't need them. Bummer. So I was wheeled closer to the door, and I walked with some help to the car. I saw double/triple for a couple hours, but it was nothing compared to my bar crawl of 2007 when East Lansing heard I died. In a couple hours it had worn off, and a nice nap and a bunch of blood-soaking gauze later, I started to improve. It probably took a day for the anesthetic to wear off, and so there were phases of dizziness and perfect clarity in random order. I won 27 levels of Gears 3 Horde by myself (yes, that really happened), and took some pills.

Me immediately following surgery. Luckily this was short-lasted.

Worst trouble I had was with the Vicodin. Unfortunately, I don't take that stuff too well, especially without some heavy food to absorb the damage and even out the breakdown. I couldn't consume enough food to buffer the pills and so I got pretty dizzy with the meds. But to be honest, the pain wasn't bad at all. After a day, I stopped taking the Vicodin and just took ibuprofen. It was enough to dull the pain in the jawbone, and the rest really didn't hurt at that point. Because my wife was very diligent about preventing me from doing early damage to their sutures, I healed very quickly and wasn't even swollen within 24-36 hours.

I waited to post this until after all the meds had finally cleared out, so I can say in post-script that in less than a week I was able to eat most soft foods and I owe a shout-out to a few great people. My wife is amazing, thanks to my little brother for visiting, and lastly, Ryan came to my rescue and played XBox with me when everyone else who said they might turned around and bailed. You guys are great! My 5 foods of choice were Guinness (after 2 days), Wendy's Frosty, applesauce, chocolate pudding, and the edible incredible egg. You all got me back on my feet quickly and I lost barely any time with this mess. I was able to enjoy the holidays and celebrate the time off with family.

Guinness is the solution for most everything! Me back in Dublin.

Moral of the story - this stuff is not nearly as bad as everyone makes it sound. Be careful and follow the doc's orders and all will end well with a little help from above.