Click here to see the extracted teeth!
Seeing as how I’m 26 today, earlier this month I was informed in no uncertain terms that I needed to at least make an attempt to see a dentist before I stopped being covered by Seebs’ insurance. One of the philosophies I try to live by is “cancellation lists are real and can unhurt you”, so on Monday the 8th I called the local dental clinic. They told me they were booking out until June for cleanings, but I could come in for a new patient consultation the very next day if I wanted. I figured that even if I didn’t end up being able to get a cleaning, a consultation was better than nothing.
That Tuesday I was pleased to learn that despite having put off figuring out how to go to the dentist as an adult to pretty much the very last minute, my teeth were doing pretty well. And, interestingly, it turned out that while the dental hygienists were booking out until the summer, the dentists themselves can do cleanings and were not. I asked what the functional difference was; apparently there isn't one but a lot of people are picky about this for some reason. All the more convenient for me! I was able to get my dental cleaning just two days later and it went quite smoothly.
I had forgotten, however, about the existence of wisdom teeth, and apparently just because I'm not thinking about something doesn't mean it's not a problem. Thus, the dentist referred me to an oral surgeon. I called that office the next day, assuming the referral had gone through by then. Not only had it gone through, but there was in fact an opening for me to come in for a consultation that very same day. There's something magical about waking up and doing things before noon, I suppose.
***
The consultation was painless, though the requisite paperwork was not. (Seriously, that was the longest pre-appointment paperwork I've ever had to fill out in my life. It took multiple hours and even with help I still managed to guess incorrectly what some of it meant and have to fix it at reception.) It was a pretty short appointment. They covered what the dentist had told me the day before—that my lower wisdom teeth were getting in the way, and that my upper wisdom teeth were minding their own business for now but that it was a good idea to take them out anyway. And then the oral surgeon asked if I wanted to be put under for the procedure.
I’ve been put under a handful of times, and it’s not the worst experience. It is disorienting, but to be honest so is waking up from a bog standard afternoon nap. It’s the classic fast-forward button. Plenty of people have thoughts like “I wish I could fast-forward through this experience” and surgery is one of the few experiences you are allowed, nay, encouraged to fast-forward through.
But that’s the thing. I like having experiences! I even like to have bad experiences, as long as they’re not ones I’ve had many times before. And I’m a writer! This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a first-hand experience, one that most people don’t have!
So I said no. I wanted to stay awake for the experience. “That’s great!” said the oral surgeon. “If you don’t go under, you can even drive yourself home afterward!” This wasn’t actually true, because I can’t drive in the first place, but it was still a good gauge for how I’d be feeling afterward. I made an appointment for a week later, and went home to be informed by my family that they thought this was a crazy decision.
***
On Wednesday I grabbed my emotional support leafeon plushie (above) and went in for my appointment. The oral surgeon’s assistant (I forgot to ask her actual position, and I’m kicking myself about it now) told me that if she could do her wisdom tooth extraction over again, she’d choose to stay awake for it. She added—as both she and the oral surgeon reiterated many times over the course of the procedure—that almost no one chooses to stay awake for it. I asked a couple questions that hadn’t occurred to me previously, namely “How long will this take?” (a few minutes for the numbing, then 20-25 minutes total for the extractions) and “Can I keep the extracted teeth?” (yes, if they aren’t in too many pieces). I was relieved to hear the first answer, because a friend of mine had mentioned a few days before that they’d gone under for their wisdom tooth extraction because they were told it would be a couple hours of boredom. I needn’t have worried, though; there was not a single point during the procedure in which I experienced anything close to boredom.
I’d been told during the consultation that most people find the numbing injections to be the worst part of the procedure. I’m not a stranger to them—I remember having had my gums numbed as a child. I assume this had something to do with the teeth I broke and had to get veneers for in elementary school, but honestly I no longer remember the context, just the sensory experience, so it’s entirely possible it was unrelated to that. In any case, I remembered the injections being painful but not intolerably so, and this merely emboldened me in my decision.
Time makes memories indistinct, and my understanding is that the act of recalling them alters them. I remembered the injections as a sharp sting, but they’re actually a two part experience, a sharp sting followed by the viscerally wrong feeling of a foreign liquid being pushed into/under the flesh. I think the temperature is part of it—it feels too cold. Not freezing, but enough that it’s clear it’s from outside the body. I’ve had similar sensations with vaccinations before, but never so intense as these. As intense as they are, however, they don’t last very long because even as you’re still processing the sensation your face is rapidly becoming, well, numb.
Most of the injections go in the corners of the gums, near where the wisdom teeth are. I was maintaining a death grip on my leafeon, but apparently that was more than enough, because the oral surgeon and his assistant were vocally impressed at how I wasn’t even flinching. (I’m allowed to brag. It’s my blog and also my birthday.) I did flinch at the last injection, the worst by far, which went into the roof of my mouth. Now I have a point of reference for what being stabbed in the roof of the mouth feels like, which in fact is something I needed for a specific story I’ve been writing so frankly at this point I was already going “Worth it!” If that was the most painful part, surely I had this in the bag!
***
The numbing process didn’t take long, and then the procedure itself started. I would like to reassure everyone reading this that I did not have to hold my mouth open through sheer force of will, as one of my friends was apparently picturing with awe and horror. I was instructed to bite down on some sort of plastic block put between my teeth on the side not actively being worked on, and while by the end of the procedure my jaw was exhausted and I wanted nothing more than to close my mouth, keeping it open took absolutely no effort on my part.
They started with the upper right tooth (followed in order by lower right, upper left, and lower left), and it became apparent early on that my teeth were playing hard to get. I didn’t get a great look at the tray of tools, but the oral surgeon switched tools a lot, and I could feel the pressure against my teeth and gums as he tried to get better leverage as well as hear the sounds of tooth-material being scraped against.
I was raised with some pretty toxic views about pain and discomfort, and as someone with chronic pain and a prone-to-breaking body I have been grappling for a long time with the disparity between what I was taught and my own experiences of discomfort and pain. It wasn’t until this experience that I really understood what it would mean for something to be uncomfortable without being painful. I disliked it, but it was not something I felt any urgency to be done with, nothing I felt an inclination to flinch away from.
I was told to make some sort of indication if I felt something sharp, which I did when they started work on the upper left tooth. I could tell something was different then, not just in the fact that I could feel something different but in the fact that I was having the experience of “this thing is hurting me and I need to get away from it” decoupled from the base discomfort of the situation. I’d been feeling the discomfort for a while now! The pain was a new and distinct aspect of the experience the discomfort was also a part of! I think that this was what I was actually supposed to take away from the anti-helpfully phrased “Are you in pain or just uncomfortable?” that I heard so many times as a child. I wasn’t able to make the distinction when everything hurt, and it was both damaging and unfair to put that on me, but I think I do understand now.
***
They showed me the upper right tooth as soon as it was fully out, which was extremely exciting. It had just been inside me and now it was outside of me! And then they started on the lower right tooth, which was for me the worst of the four. I believe this was when the oral surgeon said outright that my teeth were being notably difficult to extract, and also when he brought out the drill.
I was warned about the drill the first time, and in theory I’d have liked to have been warned every time thereafter, but in practice it was unnecessary because I was pretty locked in to the experience and paying close attention to the tools as they were being swapped in. I could see for myself when the drill was coming back into play. It was loud, and powerful enough to move my head, and honestly I could see it being easily the worst part of the experience for someone with a little more pain tolerance and a little less ability to deal with Noises than me. As it was, I remember thinking, multiple times, “My head is being vibrote.” I’m still not sure exactly what the drill was for, because I couldn’t exactly ask questions by the time it was introduced, but I assume it was not good for the structural integrity of the teeth it was used on because my lower right tooth was given to me in several pieces and my lower left tooth seems to have been so destroyed that they didn’t bother to save me whatever was left of it.
When asked why I said the lower right was the worst by a friend shortly after the procedure, I told them I thought it was because that was when the drill was first used, but the lower right of my face also ended up the most swollen so I’m taking that as vindication for my assessment actually just being objectively correct. The top left was in my opinion the least bad, despite or perhaps because of needing an extra numbing injection.
While he was working on the lower left tooth, the last one, the oral surgeon muttered something about a workout. He did seem quite tired, and according to the time as I checked it on my way out, the procedure took almost twice as long as the estimate I’d been given at the beginning. The oral surgeon and his assistant kept telling me I was doing a great job and that my teeth were taking more effort than most. Honestly this whole thing did wonders for my ego; I got a truly absurd amount of compliments throughout.
***
My appointment was at 11 AM. At 11:08, when I was briefly left alone after the injections, I messaged a group chat that “Im getting a good grade in getting my wisdom teeth removed”, and then despite all the difficulties I was in the car and on my way home by noon. I was doing fantastic until the numbness wore off a couple hours later, at which point I did not in fact write this on Wednesday as I had planned and instead mostly just slept a lot until this morning when I decided enough was enough and I should actually write this. So I wrote it!
As a final note, as I was getting my things to leave, the assistant asked how it was. I said “Fun!” as well as I could through the numbness and gauze in my mouth, and her face lit up: “No one’s ever said that before!”
Well, I meant it! It was terrible and I enjoyed it immensely. I’m quite happy with my decision to stay awake. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, but if you are, like me, an insane person who likes to have a bad time, and you need to get your wisdom teeth out, you should consider whether you might want to experience it instead of just fast-forwarding.