Oh fuck my life.
I woke up with the familiar swelling at the back of my mouth...feels like I'm chewing on flaps of my gums and cheek. My last remaining wisdom tooth trying to erupt. Fuck. I hoped it was just a gun infection, but as soon as I got to work in Gatineau, I called and got an emergency appointment with my dentist (conveniently located down the road), having a sneaking suspicion that today would be the day it had to come out.
Sure enough, it was no infection. The tooth was trying to move. My fourth time in the chair, and I knew this would be the worst.
You see, folks, I haven't always had the luxury of good dental advice, and that's how I got to where I am now. In Yellowknife, as a pre-teen, I had one dentist tell me I would need braces, but then another dentist (at the same clinic), said no. Result: I have horrendously buck teeth up top.
After I left Yellowknife and moved to Edmonton, several years passed before I had enough coverage to go to the dentist. My dentist there was awesome! He fixed the large chip in my front tooth, he smoothly and deftly extracted my upper right wisdom tooth when it erupted and became infected, and then he very quickly and easily removed the upper left tooth after my mouth had time to heal. But as I was already in my mid-20s, he considered that my lower wisdom teeth remain, as they were already anchored by my jaw and were unlikely to move. Result: I continued to have my lower wisdom teeth into my 30s.
When I moved to Burnaby, it took a year or two before I found a dentist, and he was quite good, but he saw that my bottom wisdom teeth were on the verge of impacting. After looking at my x-rays, he determined that the teeth were in delicate positions and may be problematic, so he arranged for an oral surgeon to extract them. It was horrendous. Further x-rays determined that I had multiple roots, twisted around each other, and that my right tooth was sitting on a facial nerve that would cause paralysis if improperly disturbed. The surgeon decided to start with the left side, since it looked to be easier. An hour and a half and a re-freezing later, he had literally wrestled the tooth and all roots out, but both he and I were severely exhausted, and I was in a great deal of pain. We mutually agreed that we would not continue on with the right tooth. And I went home to a painful recovery. They couldn't book an appointment for the right tooth before I was scheduled to move to Ottawa. Result: I still had a wisdom tooth.
Until today. I warned my dentist here that he was in for a challenge. In fact, I warned him at my first appointment with him. But every time the issue was raised, he brushed me off. Even today, he breezily predicted that the whole thing would be out in 10 minutes. He was wrong.
After nearly two hours, he was still struggling to remove the last piece of a root that was fused to my jaw. There was blood everywhere, and multiple tooth/root chips littered the floor. He had ripped open the side of my mouth with his tools, leaving me with a large cold-sore-looking gash. And the nerve was dangerously close to what was left. He admitted defeat. The small portion of root will stay were it is, likely forever fused to my jaw.
I'm in enough pain to think it was all four teeth out at once. My cheek and jaw are badly swollen, the pain is intense (let's call it a 9 on the pain scale), and damn if my dentist didn't prescribe both a painkiller and an antibiotic that must both be taken with food. Food, that I can't eat because I can barely open my mouth.
As I lay in the chair, being mangled, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that this was the last time, that finally I had exhausted my supply of wisdom teeth. It didn't work, I wasn't comforted, and nothing could stop me crying in agony.
I want my Mummy...
...Wish you were here.
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