Nothing But The Tooth

I had my last wisdom tooth pulled yesterday morning, right on schedule. For whatever reason, this was the first time I had this done under General Anesthesia (which, in itself, is something I haven't been through since childhood), which was administered via I.V. even before I had a shot of novocaine. Looking back from now, if I'd had any idea how very different this experience would be compared to previous extractions, I might have reconsidered on the GA part. In fact, I likely would have: yesterday was pretty fuckin' rough.

Going into this, I felt pretty cocky: yesterday was going to be more of a "last free day off before Christmas" than a sick day. If you've never had a wisdom tooth pulled on novocaine, it's really no big deal at all. In fact, it's really no worse than having a couple of cavities filled. Yes, you'll be sore at times when the pain meds wear off, but you can drive yourself home afterwards and only have to worry about what not to eat for the first day or so and keeping the extraction site clean. Thus, I lined up some bottled water, chicken noodle soup, and a box of saltines to get me through the worst of this, and I had a prescription of hydrocodone that I'd picked up from Walgreen's on Tuesday morning. All systems go and ready to rock, you might say.

Along comes Wednesday morning. It was required that I have someone to drive me home afterwards, so Sarah opted to take the day off and be my medical chauffeur. We got to the offices of Great Lakes Jaw & Implant Surgery just before 8 A.M. and I was brought into an examination room a few minutes later. After a short wait (this guy seems to always be running behind), the place was buzzing with activity as the oral surgeon and two female attendants moved busily around the small room while raising my chair into a weirdly not-quite-uncomfortable position so that my head was tilted dramatically back away from my chest. They couldn't seem to get a vein going inside of my elbow, so I felt a pinprick on the back of my hand and within 30 seconds I was out like a light.

Actually, "out like a light" is kind of a misnomer as I have no memory of even falling asleep, per se. The next thing I recall was waking up suddenly with a very numb left jaw and some distant traumatic half-memory/dream (?) of being under a dentist's drill and signalling "OW THAT HURTS" (I chickened out when given the chance to ask if a drill was used on me during the procedure ... in retrospect, I really don't want to know). Whether that memory was a drug-induced nightmare or not, I was pretty damn out of it and I have hardly any memory at all of writing a check to cover the operation, the trip home, getting in the front door, you name it. I think I was largely doing okay with walking, for what it's worth, though I also remember Sarah giving me a supportive hand at odd times.

The real nightmare, however, began not long after we got back home and I was dazedly surfing the web, checking my e-mail, and replacing the bloody gauze pad in my mouth every 5-15 minutes, waiting for the worst of the bleeding to stop. I popped the first of my prescribed pills and within twenty minutes was starting to feel pretty dangerously queasy. I went to bed quickly and managed to slip into an uncomfortable snooze that lasted until sometime after 3 P.M., when I woke up in a hell of a lot of pain.

Popping another tablet, I attempted to get some soup down and failed. The sensation of the broth was too much to handle at that point, and trying to get down some water didn't feel much better: the left side of my face was a live wire. Not much later, the nausea returned full bore, and it was then that I realized that the pain pills were doing as more harm than good since taking them on an empty stomach was only making me sick. I returned to bed again and fought down the urge to ralph all over the damn place as I slipped back into dreamworld.

A part of my mind knows good and well that, when nauseated, the best thing to do is just head for the nearest commode and yak and get the agony over with. Problem is, I also hate throwing up so much that I will frequently battle this urge with all the willpower I have to keep that from happening. Thus, I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening lying semi-comatose in bed, moaning in misery, popping the odd pills, trying to get something into my stomach to keep it from freaking out over the pills, and generally trying very hard not to retch (a battle I finally lost around 10 P.M. and the results of which will probably kill my appetite for chicken noodle soup for a long time).

Somewhere around 2 or 3 A.M., I had finally had enough of being awake for a half hour before getting sick to my stomach again and decided to call it a night.

This morning went far better: I woke up around 8:30 and did some tentative puttering around, swished around my mouth with some Aquafina, ate a bowl of Apples & Cinnamon oatmeal and returned to bed around 11. A couple of hours later, I was up out of bed and getting ready for work, the only remnants of yesterday's agony being a dull soreness behind my bottom left molar. The worst is over. This year soon will be as well. Hallelujah.