It was still pretty early for me to be awake, I thought as I drove my parents car down the long stretch of country road that interrupted the rolling green hills of the Far North. Nathan King's "Its Never Too Late" was blaring from the car's speakers, and my hands tensed on the steering wheel as I neared the outskirts of Town. I was feeling very nervous. I drove cautiously to the clinic where my parents both work, second-guessing if I really knew where I was going a few times.
I pulled up beside another vehicle when I'd reached the clinic's staff car park. Gravel rolled and scraped against each other under the wheels as I killed the ignition and got out of the car. I walked up to the clinic's back door entrance and peeked nervously inside. I immediately gathered that my Mother was not one of the receptionists sitting with their backs to me and talking happily to patients. I decided to stealthily make my way across the Reception area and into my Mum's office, but once I had arrived there I noticed that room was empty. I turned sharply to see a figure disappear down the corridor, so I rushed after it. It was my mum.
"Mama!" I called out to her in a loudish inside voice, she acknowledged me with a hand wave and then disappeared into the restroom. I followed her in because I didn't want to awkwardly wait for her outside.
"I couldn't hold it in any longer" she called to me after I asked her why she was doing this now, and I laughed. It was pretty typical I guess.
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Back in my Mum's office, my Mum handed me a small pill (MY HAPPY PILL). I remembered taking this pill the last time I had teeth ripped out of my mouth. It had calmed me right down and only leaves me with vague memories about the whole experience. Nothing traumatic though, so that gave me hope that this time might be similar.
Because I was already feeling quite nervous about what was going to happen in an hour, I gladly took the happy pill and swallowed it back within a matter of seconds, using only a tiny bit of water from a cup. I had been told not to eat or drink anything a few hours before the surgery so I didn't want to go against that and drink a whole cup of water now.
I slumped down on a chair next to my Mum's office, waiting for its effect to kick in.
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I'm following my dad down the corridor and into the "Medical Supplies" room. He is rifling through boxes of needles and things, my eyes widen in fear and I instinctively cross my arms and begin to pace around the room nervously. My dad mutters something about where to find a particular medical supply or something like that but I am too freaked out about him sticking a needle in me to ask him what he means or even make sure he was or wasn't talking to me. Once he seems to have found what he was looking for he swiftly disappears into a room nearby, I slowly follow him out of the supply room but linger instead in the corridor. I examine the emergency fire switch thing, and conclude that it is very much like every other fire switch I have seen before in my life.
"Do you have a tourniquet I can borrow" I hear my dad ask a man, who tells him that he does and as I lean slightly over to catch a glimpse of what's going on inside the room, I see my dad and this man rummaging around for something and then begin to talk about how my Dad is going to set an IV up for me now.
It isn't long before my Dad beckons me into the room and I enter slowly and sit on the bed next to him. He is opening different packets of medical supplies and getting the little IV thingy set up. The man in the room, a fellow doctor at the clinic, tells me I'm lucky that my dad is using such a small needle, but to be honest, it looks flippin massive to me!! My breath quickens and I try not to think about what is about to happen.
Soon my dad takes my left arm and binds the top of it with the tourniquet and makes me pump my fist a few times and taps on the vein in my arm several times.
Before I have a chance to register what is going on he plunges the needle into the vein on top of my hand. The pain is instant, it feels a little like a bee sting, but as the needle is pushed further in, the pain builds and builds and eventually I let out a yelp of pain.
I turn my face to the opposite side of where the needle is being put in my hand and my other hand even covers my face as my dad orders me to calm down.
He is angry and stressed out. I hear him tell the other doctor that the vein burst, and when I look back at what is happening I see that my blood is dripping down my dad's hand. He takes the needle out of my hand and I start to cry. He quells the bleeding by pushing tissue onto the top of my hand where the needle just was. At some point the other doctor asks my dad if he'd prefer it if he did it, since I'm not his daughter he'd be able to get the IV in no problem.
My dad tells me how my freaking out is freaking him out and that its hard for him to do this with my squeaking and squawking.
"I'm really trying to be calm" I sniff, "I guess the happy pill hasn't kicked in yet"
My dad agrees and then apologises for hurting me, I guess a crying girl has that effect on people.
I turn to the other doctor and tell him with a teary laugh that I'm 21.
He doesn't find it as amusing as I thought he would, and instead tells me that nobody walks into his room and asks him to put a needle in them.
"What about heroin addicts?" I ask with a slight smile,
"Oh, they're different mate".
I feel a little dejected, that joke would have made me laugh if I wasn't the one getting a needle stuck into me right now.
My dad readies the supplies for a second try which goes off without any problems. The needle slips under the skin with only a slight pinchy sensation, and then the other doctor tells me that's all done.
I am surprised, since the first try was so painful. I glance at my left hand where there is a garish blue bruise forming around a small white area with a speck of blood in the middle. Awesome.
My dad and the other doctor fix the IV thing to my right hand with tape, and after a minute it looks pretty legit! My dad then pumps half a syringe of white solution into it. I think I heard him say it was water so I won't get thirsty but I can't confirm this.I returned to my Mum's office and slumped on the same chair as before. I showed her my left hand where my dad had failed to put the IV in properly and added how he had told the other doctor that it had "popped". I don't know what this means but judging by my mum's reaction, which was amused disbelief, it must not happen that often. My mum then got me to do odd jobs for her in the office, like sorting out ACC receipts from every other kind of appointment receipt, which I managed to do in a matter of minutes.
The happy pill had begun to take more of an effect now so I began cracking jokes with my Mum and the other woman who worked in her office. I talked incessantly and my mum was getting really frustrated, I told her just to calm down. Hahahaha!
"Feeling more calm?" my dad asked as he came to check on me between seeing his own patients,
"Dude, I am a very calm person. I'm just as calm as ever" I told him, which resulted in him laughing and returning to his work, potentially with a "Yeah right" just before he was out of earshot.
My mum took me into the Reception area and let me shred some stuff, which was surprisingly fun!!! Then when I was back in her office I begun to fold letters and put them into envelopes until my Dad told me it was time to go.
As I walked back outside into the bright sunlight, I noticed that the ground was starting to feel a bit wobbly and I was feeling very tired. I fell into the passenger seat of my dad's car and dropped my head to the side and tried to nap. For some reason I began to feel very emotional, tears were spilling down my eyes and I didn't want to be there. When we arrived at the dentist, I tearfully told my Dad that I wanted to say a prayer before we went in. We stood by the car and I asked God for his peace to fill me, and for the procedure to go well, and then my Dad also said a few things which I don't remember now.
Once we were inside the Dentist building, I was significantly sleepier and slumped into one of the waiting chairs. The receptionist smiled at me and said a few things but I was too sleepy to really know what was going on. I don't know how much time passed because I had tilted my head to the side and tried to doze off again. I'm sure the Receptionist asked me if I was feeling sleepy and I would have said yes. The dentist came by and took my dad away to talk to him about the procedure.
Eventually a woman hovered over me and told me that she needed to weigh me, so I got up out of my seat and plodded down a corridor after her. She got the weights out and I told her I thought I was 57 or 58. Turns out I'm 58. Well I was mostly right. She took me back to the waiting room and I fell back into my seat and started laughing at the thought of rolling around on the floor trying to find somewhere comfy to nap. I slumped across the chair and started fake-snoring, causing me to laugh even more. Once I was sitting more upright I was collected by... I don't remember. The dentist? A nurse? Anyway they took me to the surgical room where a big dentist chair stood in the middle of the room. I fell into that as well. I was so sleepy.
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Soon I had some sun glasses on and my dad was putting a sedation thing into my IV. I was still feeling emotional. A nurse kept telling me everything would be OK, but tears were spilling over my eyes again. I sniffed, and peered at the ceiling. It was a nice blue colour, and the light up there was very clear. It looked like it could be made of crystal. I felt very vulnerable just lying there. The nurse put a black clip thing on my thumb, I think it was linked up to a heart monitor thing, because I could soon hear a beeping. She patted my hand and told me it was going to be OK. I wished I didn't have to be there. My eyes blinked away the tears.
Soon it was anesthetic time, which I knew because the Dentist told me he was going to give me some anesthetic now. He brought forward a gigantic needle, and I knew that this was going to hurt. When I was younger and I had to get a filling put in, I had screamed so loudly when they injected me with the anesthetic that the teacher of the classroom next to the dental clinic came in to see if everything was OK.
The pain of the needle entering my gum didn't cause me to scream though. The searing pain entered my mouth like acid being poured over me, but soon it was over, and everyone in the room was telling me how good I was doing.I noticed the heart monitor beeping went nuts when I was being injected though, and I must have asked what the beeping was and they would have told me. It made sense. The anesthetic injecting continued three more times. There wasn't any screaming at all, but its still really hurt. If I was in a different situation I thought I might say: SON OF A BEE STING! [Anchorman Quote] I wanted to say it, but I didn't.
After that the Dentist and my dad kept asking me how I was feeling, trying to gauge whether the sedation was working yet. It took a while for the sedation to kick in, but I knew that it had once I looked around and saw that everything had a nice warm, white and fuzzy look to it. And I was so very sleepy. I'm sure I had said something to the people in the room. Maybe cracked a few jokes. But what were they? Did anyone laugh? Probably not. I don't remember much after that.
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I open my eyes. The dentist is there, and someone else, and they have light blue face masks on and they are telling me to make my mouth wider. There is a scratching. They have a long tweezer-looking thing. I think I know that they are cutting me.
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Blood is filling my mouth. There is a suction machine, thank goodness. My friend Rhiannon told me not to swallow the blood so I make an effort not to swallow at all. I breathe through my mouth. There is a lot of blood but they are suctioning it up, so its OK. I'm not going to drown in my own blood.
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Someone is digging around for one of the bottom teeth. I'm sure that's what it is. I hear my Dad talking to the dentist. He puts more stuff into my IV. I am so out of it. I'm just lying here, its actually pretty nice. I try to play my favourite Paper Kites songs in my head but I can't remember it now.
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When I close my eyes I see textured blackish yellow things rolling around. When I open my eyes I see the suction machine filled with my blood.
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I don't feel like doing this anymore, I feel scared. I want to see my Dad, is he still here? I open my eyes and only see that bright crystal light and the two dentists, they are still working away. I close my eyes. I imagine I am somewhere else, with a friend, and he is holding my hand and it makes me feel better.
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I hear the Dentist tell my Dad that the top tooth came out easily. Well that's good, I guess.
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There is a sharp pain. I don't know what's happening but it feels like hooks being put into my gums. It happens three more times. Am I being stitched up? I've never had stitches before, is that what it feels like? I see my dad and somehow his hand ends up in mine. I don't know how I managed to get that to happen but it makes me feel better.
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"We're all done" the Dentist says. I am still tired. I look up. My face is all swollen up and my Mum is there. She smiles at me. I think my Dad is there too but he is going back to work now, he says. Or maybe my Mum says it. I think he tells me I did really well. They are all saying that. Mum looks pleased, she talks with someone about something, probably the dentist. Someone asks me if I want to keep my teeth and I nod my head and tell them I do. HECK YES I WANT TO KEEP THEM! If its gross and kinda creepy if you keep it, count me in!
I try to get off the Dentist chair but I fall back into it. My mum tells someone that she needs to have all our things together before she tries to get me out of the chair. This makes me laugh, or at least laugh inside because my face is still all swollen and I have gauze in my mouth so I don't even think I can smile even if I wanted to. Mum eventually gets me off the dentist chair and I thank the Dentist but he probably can't understand me because it sounds more like: "Tthhaktgh You".
Mum leads me out into the waiting area. The nice receptionist lady is there and my Mum tells her: "It's not a good look for your patients to come out looking like this!" and they both laugh. It is funny, and my Mum is a crack up because she always makes lame jokes like this, but I can't tell her that because I am too tired and I am stumbling out the door and into the bright sunlight and down the long wooden ramp.
Mum opens the car door for me and I climb into the seat. I still feel so tired. At an intersection I stare at the women in the lane next to us, she looks at me and then looks away uncomfortably. I check my refection in the little car mirror. I look really pissed off, my face is pale and my hair is sticking up kind of crazy, and my cheeks are full of bloodied gauze. Awesome. I tilt my head to the side and doze off.
Once we are home, my Mum helps me out of the car and leads me to the front door. All the doggies are there to greet me. They want to jump up on me because they can smell the blood. Mum tells me they want to make sure I'm ok, which I think is sweet. But they can probably smell the blood and that's mainly what interests them.
Somehow I find myself in my bedroom. I crash onto my bed. My Mum takes my pillows and puts one on top of the other and tells me the dentist told her to do that. I take the pillows and prop them up in such a way that will still have my head elevated but not be totally crazy and uncomfortable. My Mum relents and lets me keep them the way I set them up.
I grab my toy cat Salem and snuggle into him.
Soon my mum comes back and puts a blanket on me. I hear a voice tell her that she shouldn't do that, that its way too warm and that I'm going to overheat under that thing. I think its my Dad, but how did he get back to the house if he was at work? My mum tells him that I am freezing cold and that I could do with a bit of heating up.
She also places a small towel on the pillow I am sleeping on. I know why she is doing this, I remember hearing a story about someone waking up with their pillow completely soaked with blood after they got their wisdom teeth out. This towel is meant to help with that. I decide to send a friend a text to tell them that the surgery went well and that I am fine but tired, and before I can even start to process everything that just happened, I feel myself finding sleep again...
*** DISCLAIMER: While I admit that in an effort to get the most dramatic and exciting parts of my experience into this story, my wisdom teeth surgery was actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
Please don't let this story scare you out of getting your wisdom teeth taken out. Yes, it is unpleasant, but it is MUCH better than the pain and possible infection and harm that leaving your wisdom teeth in can cause.
Take it from someone who is known to freak out about almost anything - I really am fine. And I can 100% say that I am glad that I've done this and I can stop worrying about it now.
Thanks so much to everyone for reading this blog entry, you're awesome! :)
Nice writing :) Gross last picture though!
ReplyDeleteBlech... I have to do this soon.
ReplyDeleteYou might have to calm me down...