{"id":27771,"date":"2021-04-20T14:40:28","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T18:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=27771"},"modified":"2021-04-20T14:41:00","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T18:41:00","slug":"goodbye-s-15-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2021\/04\/20\/goodbye-s-15-16.html","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, #s 15 & 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was told I had to have a tooth pulled I responded inappropriately. I acted as if the dentist had just told me I had 2 weeks to live. I could tell he was looking at me like, wtf? People lose teeth. Here\u2019s some middle-aged adulting for you. Grow the fuck up.<\/em><\/p>\n

The dentist\u2019s sentiments probably did not get quite that expansive in its disdain. But he obviously thought I reacted inappropriately. I now concur.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just that for most of my life these teeth have been virtually perfect. I had a brace or two in grade school but that was a result of falling off a bar-b-que when I was little, causing a tooth to get displaced. It\u2019s fine now, has been since grade 3 or 4.<\/p>\n

In college I fell and smashed my face on a bathroom sink, resulting in a cap for my front tooth being placed the next day. It has held up fine ever since, with recent dentists saying they find no trace of it ever being necessary or even present.<\/p>\n

This tooth extraction yesterday resulted in two teeth getting yanked, #s 15 and 16, the latter being a wisdom tooth. I blame this entirely on Covid anxiety, and bruxism of such strength to chew through a dozen cheap mouthguards over the past year (cheap because insurance will not cover costlier preventative measures that could have prevented this expensive-to-me mess).<\/p>\n

I felt very little pain through all this, I\u2019m lucky to say. Every day, it seemed, whilst on my daily strambles to parts well-known, I would spit up a fleck of tooth, look at it to be sure that\u2019s what it was, then toss it onto the sidewalk. Every one of these flecks of tooth made me think I was getting one step closer to exposing a nerve, which would cause real pain.<\/p>\n

But that never happened. By the time surgery was performed yesterday I had experienced only minor discomfort, and the entire procedure of yanking two teeth and placing a bone graft as the possible future foundation for implant to replace the two teeth took about 45 minutes. I felt nothing. Nada. One second I\u2019m seeing two needles go into my arm, the next I\u2019m sitting in a small room on a chair, by myself, asking Why aren\u2019t they performing this procedure on me? How are they supposed to do it in this small room?<\/em><\/p>\n

The an\u00e6sthetic worked like a sledgehammer. I was lights out. Gone. After I came to a few minutes passed before one of the dental assistants appeared and asked how I felt. I asked if we were going to do this procedure or not. She laughed a little, knowingly, having certainly seen countless patients similarly confused after returning from the dead asking how the hell they got into this small room.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t expect such instant unconcsiousness. I got put under a few times mid-2000s, when I had to get endoscopies done. Those an\u00e6sthsiologists monitored my vital signs, heartrate, blood pressure… They also put me under very gradually, at least by comparison to the dental surgeon yesterday.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not complaining, as it kept me from feeling any pain during and after, with only a few shots of discomfort that were enough to make me pop a codeine as well as an antibiotic to prevent infection.<\/p>\n

The bleeding stopped yesterday and as far as I can tell has not returned. I\u2019m rinsing my mouth out every hour or so with warm water that has salt and baking soda mixed in.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know when I\u2019ll be able to drink again, and I don\u2019t want to play any games with that. I did miss the ability to sleep last night, but the lucid dreams that I\u2019ve recently started having show great potential for delivering all the trauma and entertainment of an acid trip without the acid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was told I had to have a tooth pulled I responded inappropriately. I acted as if the dentist had just told me I had 2 weeks to live. I could tell he was looking at me like, wtf? People lose teeth. Here\u2019s some middle-aged adulting for you. Grow the fuck up. The dentist\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-181-2","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-7dV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27773,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27771\/revisions\/27773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}