Arrested Development:
Pulling the Wisdom Teeth

December 18, 2007

I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled on Monday afternoon and I sit here writing on Tuesday night. What promised to be a season in hell has turned out to be, if not a ride in a Cadillac, pretty smooth. From time spent browsing discussion lines on the Internet I know that horror stories exist, but for now it looks as if it will go down in my book as one of those things that is worse in the anticipation than in the actual event. Beginning tomorrow morning I should be off the major pain killers and beginning to take small steps back into life.

When I got called back into the small well-lit room where the work was done, the nurse had me sit down and she had the laughing gas breather settled against my nose. I began to breathe deeply since this would be my only defense against full consciousness of what was going on in my mouth. In a minute or two I was feeling numb all over. Nothing was too funny feeling, but I got reduced to that heavy/light state that you feel on first being woken up from a deep sleep.. but without the painful necessity of actually having to get up. My Fleetwood Mac songs were coming through loud and clear on my ipod but I had to make a real stirring effort to respond clearly to the doctor.

I came out of the experience a fan of laughing gas. I was present but not all the way. I knew what was happening to me but my mind kept drifting away. In fact, I remember that in the midst of my oral surgery I began thinking about writing a blog on laughing gas. As I tested out some of the possible directions for a blog I realized that the prose of altered states is a well trodden path.. and something that I have always found tedious to read. It's like writing about a dream: it may be trippy and strange but why should I care what strange associations were stirred up in someone else's sleep? So I will spare everyone my Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Wisdom Teeth Extraction blog.

My doctor was fantastic. All motion. He came in first to give me the Novocain.. which was when I first drowsily responded to him through the laughing gas. Then a few minutes later (hard to judge time) he came in to ask about my numbness. Then on his next entrance he started to work and did not stop until those teeth were out. There was drilling and cracking and pulling.. which brought me a fair ways back to the real world out of drowsyland.. but his attitude seemed to be that nothing should be prolonged. If I can't feel anything then let's get it done with. And then it was done! Just 40 minutes or so after I was called in.. and I would guess that only 20 minutes or so were related to the extraction itself.

My recovery has been aided by some rented DVDs of Arrested Development. So there has been no shortage of laughs during this recovery.. although I do often drift away into the gentle night of pain killer drowsiness while watching them.