INTRODUCTION: My friend Jessica recently moved out to Oregon (which is near my home turf) to work at Will Winton’s studio. Since there’s not much to do there except avoid bears, she asked me to help pass the time, which has led to me sending stories from my past for her amusement. Since I do this weekly, I figured I’d pass them along here as well.
So while I’m writing this week’s installment, here’s one from last Thursday. It’s about the time I got my wisdom teeth removed…
It was the summer of ’92 when I was told by my dentist that I needed to get them taken out. My father figured that the procedure might cause me to swell up and become incapacitated, so I had to do it ASAP, at least before school started.
I grew up in a military household, which meant that all medical procedures were done on base, and free of charge. But as we all know, what you get for free usually sucks. Even though I was 15, I was still was under 18, so I had to go to the pediatric ward for the procedure. For three hours, I sat in a loud waiting room of kids running around, screaming, with Barney in the background.
Eventually I saw a doctor, some young guy wearing two neck ties in an inane attempt to be funny. I was led to a room that was dark and dirty looking…. the kind they beat prisoners in. The dentist chair was pretty old looking, and once I sat down, I was literally strapped in, with my arms totally constrained (this was to prevent any “involuntary movement”).
Then he pulled out the longest fucking needle I had ever seen and stuck it right in my mouth. Hurt like hell, of course. He then left for about 20 minutes to allow the Novocain to work it’s way in my system. When he came back, he began to go to work, but told me that I should stop him if I felt something cold, which was a sign of the Novocain wearing off. And within a minute, I began to feel cold. So he stopped, shot me up, and left again. This all occurred about three more times, so after all was said and done, I had been four separate shots of the stuff.
Finally, when it seemed my body had enough, the procedure finally began. Using a special little hammer, he hit each tooth at just the right spot, breaking them down into easy to grab pieces. Well all except the last one, which he must have hit wrong, so it shattered into dozens of teeny tiny bits which took forever to collect. Did I also mention he had that Matthew Sweet song “Girlfriend” on repeat the whole time?
Afterwards, he sewed up the holes and sent me on my way. I had to get special medicine from the army hospital pharmacy, which takes about two hours to prepare. So to kill time, my dad and I went to the PX (the army base general store.)
Now here’s the thing…. when you get shot with Novocain, you produce saliva. So if you’re shot with it four times, you produce a LOT of saliva. Also, an interesting thing happens when just one tiny drop of blood touches saliva: it turns it all red, sorta like food color. So image what would happen if your producing a whole mouthful of spit every two minutes to the point that you’re drooling but don’t care cuz you’re so out of it and one of the holes in your mouth wasn’t closed properly, and thus leaking blood?
As I walked around the women’s department for no good reason, I kept getting funny looks (more so that usual). When I looked in a mirror at the make-up center, I noticed I had a ton of blood (actually, spittle-blood, but I didn’t know this at the time) running out of my mouth and getting all over my shirt. So I ran to the bathroom to spit into the sick, where bloody spit splashed all over the place. People in the john all freaked and they all ran out. One even yelled out “he’s fucking infected!!!” whatever that meant. My dad came rushing in, who had lost track of me, but I guess saw me run across the store. He was instantly pissed.
He took me back to the doctor’s office and demanded an explanation. The doc gave me a look and explained what the problem was and had a nurse fix the wound. Not once did he put down his sandwich. By the time the mess was resolved, the pain was finally kicking in, and the medicine was ready.
I went home with the very specific instruction to rinse my mouth out with salty WARM water. But my mom, being Korean, and not having a great grasp of the English language gave me salty HOT water. The instant it was in my mouth, the pain was so intense I passed out. So when I woke up, it wasn’t my cheeks that were swollen, just my forehead.
