The (Literally) Excrutiating Telling Of My Wisdom Teeth Surgery

[tabular_rasa]

I had my surgery at 9:00 this morning. I was really tired last night, however, so I gorged myself on popcorn cakes (no food eight hours before the surgery) and went to bed at about 10:00. I woke up in the morning at about 5:30 or 6:00, however, because I was well-rested and Tory and Neil were making plenty of noises about that time as they got up (yes, even the 6th grader has to be up at 6:00, because his bus to leave for Band at the middle school arrives at 6:45 . . . ).

So I got up out of bed pretty soon after that, about 7:00-ish, and played around online a little bit as I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink—not even water (which was annoying, considering my throat was particularly phlegm-y this morning /-:).

Then it was off to the place, and we waited around forever for them to finally come in and give us the forms. We talked to the oral surgeon for a while about the plans (after all, this was so last-minute, lol . . . ), and we even had to take a second set of x-rays, since my dentists just sort of forgot that my wisdom teeth existed (and would need to be taken out!) after about 11th grade (the ones they gave us were from 2004, lol . . . ).

I was surprised at how informal the room seemed to be; for my tonsils and my final appendix removal, I was on a gurney and wheeled into a room full of equipment, equipped myself with a hairnet, warm, heated blanket, and plenty of room to lay my IV-inserted arms flat upon. For my emergency appendix drain, I was even brought into one of those huge, cold, sterile operating theaters. I remember my operating room for my several-teeth-removal-for-braces oral surgery was more casual, too, but I was surprised to see that it was just basically a dentist’s chair, this time; I wondered where on earth I was going to put my IV-ed arm!

So my mom (who I allowed in to help me fill out the forms with the insurance information, and such) was to leave the room, and the operation began. The two nurses and the surgeon talked to me about what I was studying in school (“Oh, Japanese? What do you plan to do with that?”) but I kept coming off very distracted as, fuck, I knew there were about to stick that IV needle in me, who were they kidding, lol—and I wanted to pay attention to it, to concentrate on it so that I honestly wouldn’t freak out (you can’t surprise me with these things, lol . . . ). I felt the prick, certainly, and it was no bother, and after a minute of him futzing around with it down there on my right arm, I felt the familiar warm heaviness in my head—and then I don’t remember anything after that.

With anesthesia, it’s never a one minute they’re preparing you *snap* now suddenly you’re awake; there’s definitely a period of sleep which you do not remember and do not seem to dream during. You wake up and the last thing you remember is the last thing you remember before you fell asleep; you know you must have been asleep, and that time has passed—but it just doesn’t feel the same as sleep.

Anyway, I woke up from my anesthesia, and it was not too bad at all. I was able to open my eyes practically right away, and I was well aware of how conscious I was. (With my appendix surgeries, I lay in vegetative misery as I was awake and wanting to be, but my senses were taking forever to get back in order to function; I could barely hear, there was no feeling, and opening my eyes was painful and took forever! I could barely even swallow my own spit, lol . . . ). I could feel the gauze in the sides of my mouth, and plenty of apparati hooked up to both arms. I was (surprisingly?) capable of lifting the warm blanket they had placed over me and looking down to see that my arm was taped to the dentist chair (so that’s how they kept it flat and out of the way :-P), and I had those little clip-monitory thingies on my fingers. On the other arm, I had a blood pressure cuff, which repeated continued to swell up and go down and take my measurements. (During my appendix episode, I once made the mistake of taking it off, as the nurse had left to handle another patient and I figured she had finished with me and had just forgotten to take it off. It swelled up like a balloon and started beeping like crazy—“OH MY GOD SHE HAS NO BLOOD PRESSURE SHE MUST BE DEAD!!!”—and the nurse ran back in relatively quickly and I had to cover up just how utterly finally this ridiculous balloon-cuff was :-P). After a minute or two, one of the nurses poked her head in to see that I was doing alright. I said that I was perfectly fine; she said, “Just don’t get up and walk around.” I totally could have, lol :-P (During my appendix episode, I totally used to piss the pediatric nurses off with my insistence I get to and use the bathroom by myself— it was for their convenience, mind you; I just didn’t want to make them go out of their way to come over and help me every three hours! Lol . . . ).

They took me out, with a bathroom stop on the way, and with all the anesthesiatic numb within me, I could barely even feel the pain in my feet, and could just pay more attention to my swaying wooziness which was more entertaining and fun than scary, inconvenient, or even nauseating.

Mom took me home and made me take out my initial gauze (I would rather have not /-: they know how to pack it in there . . . ) and eat some pudding—- which was surprisingly good, considering my hunger—- so that she could run by Walgreens to pick up my prescriptions so that when she returned I’d have food in my stomach to take the pain-killing pills. I have to take painkillers, anti-biotics, and some anti-inflammation stuff, too, I believe, just as pretty distant intervals /-:

(My painkiller is not vicadin. Sad day )-: lol . . . I think it's just the generic stuff, lol . . . )

The numbness wore off gradually after a couple of hours; I’m now completely not-numb, but there was definitely and awkward and annoying phase in which my teeth were no longer numb but my lips were (the tip of my bottom lip was the last thing to regain feeling, lol . . . ), and so I had the pain but also the drooling.

Mom got me a silly, warm winter hat and some lip balm for me at Walgreens, and so then she insisted on taking a picture of pathetic little me with my ice-pack-head-wrap, silly fuzzy hat, and puffed-out chipmunk cheeks with gauze and blood oozing between the corners of my mouth. She wouldn’t even let me take off my glasses. Needless to say, they are very pleasant pictures:



The hat just makes it. I wouldn't look half so bad without it. Actually, the ice-wrap is very convenient; Lisa doesn't have one and she can't have her hands free all the time while using it, while I can. The sweater just makes me look fat and and glasses make my face ugly (that's why I never wear them). Yes, there is blood running down my chin . . .

I’ve spent the day mostly reading, in the dark (the shutter-blinds of my room shut, mostly, but with plenty of light still seeping in), so that while I’m still reading every time I get tired I can just lean back on my massive piles of pillows (for the purpose of comfortable keeping me sitting up), covered with a towel (to collect the inevitable bloody drool—- that appears to be the only major listed “averse side effect” I’ve shown; I’m not even really particularly swelling) and go to sleep for a few minutes to a full hour. Every twenty minutes or so I put the head-wrap ice-pack on or take it off, as prescribed. A battalion of tissues is at my aid and disposal at all times, as I’ve spat out more drool than swallowed it (the last thing I want to do is get sick on the blood running into my stomach, and vomit—and get vomit caught in my sutures O.o). I prefer to have the gauze in, and it gives some pressure along the painful area-- particularly when I bite down, which I get the will to do quite often-- and I like having pressure against my pain (it makes me feel in control?—also, Pain Type A is better than Pain Type C?).

It doesn’t even hurt that badly-- which is a good sign, as it will inevitably hurt worse tomorrow (I forgot to warn Lisa /-:). Then again, I’m the kid who was “a little uncomfortable” in the doctor’s office with my burst appendix and told the nurses immediately after my drain-insertion surgery I’d rank my pain a six out of ten (one being the most painful), “so there’s room for some recovery.” (They all practically cheered when they saw me wandering the hospital corridors a few days in in order to get exercise to counteract bedsores and such; “OH MY GOD SHE’S ACTUALLY FEELING PAIN!!!”). Being extremely non-physical does have its advantages :-P (Ahh, pain tolerance . . . ). Basically I can tell I’m bruised along the lower back jaw, all the way through the tissue and skin, and all of my teeth are sore (hence the needing to bite down on them) from the strain to my jaw. I’ve been avoiding opening my mouth too much, and I’ve been keeping my tongue conservatively placed in the center of my mouth in order to keep it from wandering too much over sore, exposed tissue that will inevitably be irritated by the salt and the soft touch. The swelling is not so bad, either; the gauze, when it’s in, creates most of the bulk, and, honestly, since my cheekbones finally decided to show up just about this year, I just look like I’ve reverted back to tenth grade, or something. I always had really round little cheeks, a rather large bottom of my face, lol . . .

I’m a bit worried about dry socket, because I do tend to “clean out” my mouth naturally with a gentle sucking motion to get the blood-drool out, but since all I’ve eaten is that one cup of pudding and I know certainly to avoid straws like the plague, I really do hope that I should be fine.

Hopefully planes don’t do anything weird to aggravate wisdom teeth sockets, either; I’ve got to make my flight on Sunday (assuming no dry socket; then I’m screwed). I also have to be careful about my drugs, or something, tomorrow; I’ve got a hair appointment that I have to drive myself to at 10:00 am /-:





Though I’ve lost my wisdom teeth, I think my “wisdom” still seems pretty well in order; I was surprised at how coherent I was under the waning anesthesia to finish up the last two or so chapters of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. That was a good book; I think I can safely say that I am now definitely a fan of his writing (I liked Demien as well, even if its Freudian dream psychology was a little weird at times—but certainly interesting considering how very into it he was at its heyday; I think he actually had a relationship with Jung himself, at some point). He seems to be very fond of the (semi-autobiographical) theme of the withdrawn intellectual who feels isolated from the rest of the world and seeks to understand the universe (he likes heavy religious play, from Manichaeism to Hinduism to Buddhism) and the nature of mankind, while also following the strong internal promptings to understand the desire, nature, and identity of his self. (In the end, he manages to rectify the seemingly-conflicting two; after all, does it not often seem impossible to know a world to which one scarcely feels they belong?). The amusing thing, to me, is that Siddharta struck me as a rather “predictable” read; it was like (NAME HERE)’s Terrorist which I read this summer. I could see every battle coming, and I knew the resolution before I even started reading. (Yet in neither case did I have any qualms about that; I like the slow inevitable spiral to the finish. “Surprise” endings piss me off, honestly, lol . . . ). I think I picked a good timing to read it, too; in little ways, I sort of felt that I traced his path. (Of course, that is the mark of a good author ^_^). I’ve got quotes up the wazoo, too, to melt in ^_^

The next three books I have on my nightstand to read, however, are slightly less philosophical; there’s a Meg Cabot book and two romance novels by Peter (yes, Improv Peter)’s mom. When Mom found out Peter’s mom wrote romance novels (since my mom reads them like junkies shoot heroin—one’s a historical romance and one’s a mystery romance, both my mom’s favorite genres), she thought it would be hilarious to find some and read them since she’s three degrees from the author. However, she insists that I get first dibs, since I’m bedridden; aka: she thinks it’s even more hilarious if I read them. I will.

Comments

[tabular-rasa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely drank a lot of water to rinse out everything after I ate (which was only twice yesterday O.o I only wanted to get my mouth dirty as seldom as possible! Lol . . . ). Today I get to start a regiment of salt-water rinses, to help assuage the bleeding and close the wounds ^_^ Tell your mom thank you for the tips!

They really are nice; I can't believe they just expected Lisa to hold an ice pack to her face! It's so inconsistent against your face, and inconvenient!