The air seemed 20 degrees colder once I walked into the operating room. My stomach churned and panic began to settle. Thoughts of if I make a dash for the exit maybe I won’t have to have my wisdom teeth extracted ran through my mind. To my dismay there was no exit door.
The nurse seated me in the ice cold chair and began attaching all these wires to me. Heart monitor began its constant pulse. The spirometer began graphing my breaths then beeped sporadically revealing the fact I had stopped breathing.
The nurse smiled and rubbed my shoulder.
“Keep breathing, honey. You’ll be fine! Why don’t you play with the monitor and look at what it tracks,” she said to me as if I was nine.
So as I waited for the doctor with my mom at my side I practiced controlling my heart rate, breathing slowly and quickly. Then he walked followed by a few other nurses in told my mom to leave and injected the needles. I heard Coldplay’s “The Scientist” began to play softly in the background, then 10 seconds later I was gone.
I really don’t know why I was so worried. I had eight teeth extracted already, four adults and four baby, from being blessed with the family trait of oddly large teeth in a normal sized jaw. But having my wisdom teeth extracted terrified me.
I wasn’t scared at first. Then they made me watch that video showing all the risks, everything went downhill from there. There was the risk of going under anesthesia which can cause death. Pulling out your upper wisdom teeth leaves the chance that they can poke a hole in your sinuses. Pulling our lower wisdom teeth can damage the nerves in your face making them numb or immobile from a few weeks to a few years. But yeah, nothing to worry about. Not even the fact that one of my teeth grew to be so big it was causing me to go deaf in one ear and if the surgery to remove them went wrong I would be deaf in one ear for the rest of my life.
So once all that information settled into my very analytical mind I felt an impending doom over the rest of my future. My friends and family’s hugs of support gave me the courage to drive to the surgery and about halfway through the door.
As I came to all I really wanted to do was go back to sleep. I was exhausted. I couldn’t talk because my mouth and my tongue were both completely numb. My mom came in and asked me how I was and I tried to tell her I had to go pee, which came out like, “I neee ooo ooo eeee” and a lot of pointing towards my bladder.
The nurse quickly wheeled in a wheelchair and my mom and dad hoisted me into the wheelchair turned and asked her where the bathroom was and turned back to see me with my head on my lap and my hands on the floor. They quickly lifted me up and wheeled me to the bathroom where my mom took over. Lifting me up telling we to wake up and muttering something as she tried to help me take off the spandex I was wearing (Don’t wear spandex — wear sweats or basketball shorts).
Once my trip to the bathroom was finished they wheeled me into the car where I sat in the front seat and hummed all the way home.
The first days were fine. I was on so many painkillers that I slept most of the weekend and my face was not very swollen, but when I woke up on Monday it was horrible. I was planning on going to school but when I woke up the excruciating pain in my jaw inhibited me from even washing my face. I cried as I tried to brush my hair and after trying to get dressed for the day I gave up took my antibiotics and pain medication and went to sleep on the couch until 11 when I took my medication and slept until my sisters came home from school. But once Tuesday came around the pain was fine and I went to school without any problems.
Overall I think that getting wisdom teeth extracted wasn’t that bad, the pain was the only thing that was annoying. You really have to make sure to follow the doctors orders after the surgery or it could be a lot worse than my experience.
by ARIELLA APPLEBY
