Before I commence on the reenactment of my wisdom teeth extraction, let me be clear: THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN TO THE AVERAGE HUMAN EXPERIENCING THE REMOVAL OF THEIR WISDOM TEETH. I just so happened to be the lucky rarity to the experience I have explained below. My surgeon even admitted that I had a more difficult time than most. So just remember, I am a unique and extremely unlucky person for having all of this happen to me.
And thus begins my story.
After watching a recent Glee episode about the mixing of oral care and anesthetics, I was rather excited to undergo my oral surgery the upcoming week. The episode played anesthetics off as a magical experience filled with fantasies of Britney Spears singing/dancing with some sexy men. However, to my complete and utter surprise (not), the experience was nothing like it.
Just a side note for the people who haven't had the surgery yet: DO NOT be fooled by the overly appealing interior decor of the waiting room. That's where they lure you into a false sense of serenity and calm. (Only upon entering the surgery room do you realize what you're in for.) I'm serious, the location I went to looked like a picture straight out of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine... or an Ikea room display.
I was giddy with excited to have my wisdom teeth taken out upon arrival. After about ten minutes of filling out insurance wavers, I was finally admitted into a surgery room. Now let me tell you, those rooms are BUTT COLD. It's so cold they have blankets for the patient to cover-up with so they don't freeze during surgery.They also have a monitor that you can find in a "real" hospital surgery room with all of the heart rate lines and blood pressure numbers. It's intimidating, to say the least. Anyway, I sat down in the chair and waited for the nurse to come in. When she finally arrived, I was immediately concerned for my personal well-being. I swear the nurse was on steroids. Not muscle-enhancing steroids, but happy-enhancing steroids. She was straight out of either Happyville or Insanetown.
"Have you taken your happy pill for today?"
"Yes, yes I have!"
My mind neglects to remember what she said exactly, but she produced some x-rays out of her lab coat and animatedly demonstrated how the surgery was going to proceed. Then another nurse came in (a more "professional" one) and decided it was time to hook me up to the IV and prepare my arm for the anesthetics. Here's a picture of what all went into my arm:
As you can see, there's a lot going on. It was painful. (Also, don't believe them when they say it feels like a "pinch"...... More like a stab....)
After that, everything started to move very quickly. I remember them walking around me getting ready, and I was sitting in my chair, staring out the window giggling with nervous excitement. Then the crazy nurse said something like
"Nighty-night, off to Disneyland for you!"
Of course I was still laughing because of the anesthetics, but in my mind I was really thinking
Do you think I'm stupid woman?
The fun now begins.
Most people start to remember what happened to them after they wake up from anesthetics. Me however, I only remember what I'm about to tell you (which is saying something).
The first thing I heard upon waking up was someone apologizing to me. (Great way to wake-up, isn't it?) Anyone who's had anesthetics before knows that when you first wake-up, everything is extremely confusing. So combined the apologies with the already existing confusion, I was double-y more confused/worried about why a nurse was saying she was sorry to me. Then I feel back asleep (I guess not too worried though, ahah). The next time I woke up, I heard a girl next to me whimpering and crying. I tried to sit up, but the bed I was laying on kept spinning and I was tempted to throw up; so I just continued to stay lying down on my spinning bed. In the midst of me trying to fight off the confusion, I felt the sudden need to start kicking the wall. So I did. I kept kicking for awhile, but then it lost its luster and I stopped. So I just laid there in my confusion listening to the crying girl. After a bit I had an impulse to start crying like the girl, so I did. And then I sobbed myself to sleep.
Next time I woke up, my mom was sitting at the end of my little recovery bed cooing and soothing like a good mommy. Then a nurse came in and turned the lights on. Oh my goodness, that was painful. Too much light with too little warning. The nurse came over to my bed and started saying that I needed to sit up. I was still extremely confused about everything, so I attempted to play it off as me still sleeping. But this nurse was a persistent little thing. She literally lifted me up and sat me up right next to my mom. Funny thing was, I nearly threw up on her after she had lifted me up (only payback). Of course, I had a mild case of nausea from the anesthetics. So the nurse went and got some anti-nausea meds and injected them into my arm (which hurt by the way). Not having any apparent affect, they had to give me the maximum dosage of the anti-nausea meds they could give me. Unfortunately, this had little to no affect so I ended up staying there for another hour (as informed to me by my mom).
I have no recollection of this next part because I swear they preformed some kind of Stupify, Obliviate, Mobilicorpus, or Immobulus curse on me (or just too much anesthetics). Most people are awake and ready walk out of the ortho surgery place on their own. Apparently I had to be wheeled out in the Wheel Chair of Honor. Yay to me.
This next part I remember vividly. After somehow getting home and into my bed, I woke up with my throat in such excruciating pain I started screaming. I remember crying because it hurt so bad; saying things like "God, just make it stop." and "I'm begging you, please make it go away." Really awful stuff. I feel bad for my mom having to listen to me, considering she couldn't do anything to help.
And oh god, then there were so many pills! I think I counted up to fourteen pills a day for the first two or three days. With my throat hurting as badly as it was, pill-time was pain-time. Each swallow was like gravel or nails or something of the liking sandpaper-ing my throat. There was a lot of crying to say the least.
After those first few days, things started to get better. Ignoring all of the blood stains on my pillow from my broken gums and my cheeks swelling to epic sizes, things were improving.... slightly. After about a week I was off the pain meds (and thank god for that. Those things really took me off planet Earth and put me onto planet I-can-do-anything-I-want-and-hey-look-there-goes-a-unicorn). School finally cames around and I went back on Tuesday with my cheeks still swollen and looking ever more like a chipmunk.
And cue the infections.
Apparently it's normal for people to get one infection. Me though, not being normal in the slightest sense, I got four. The first one I went into the doctor and they painfully put a pieces of gauze in the empty socket to let the nasty stuff (aka puss) drain out (and the gauze strip tainted all of my food with a nasty, papery taste until they were taken out a week later). Then, set in infection two. I caught it early enough to stop it without having to go to the doctor again and being prescribed another 24 penicillin. However, the check-up for the first infection was scheduled right after the second infection had started to go down, so of course, the doctors noticed and were worried again. I reassured them it didn't hurt and was going down-- so they let me go. Then set in infection three (about two weeks later). My mom (after the first infection) had given me a lecture about how I could die if I left an oral infection untreated, so of course, when the first signs of infection three set in, I told my mom right away. Yet another hospital visit and another prescription of penicillin. The doctors were surprised to see me again and I also detected a hint of annoyance. This made me mad at them, so I was determined to never go back to that place again (most people only visit three times in total. I had visited six by the end). About two weeks later, the beginning of infection four set in. I jumped on it and brought it down. No doctor visit and the end of my infection plague.
Now many of you may be thinking that I wasn't taking good enough care of my mouth to get all of these infections. Just some background information about my previous healing processes. My cartilage piercing I got freshman year still hasn't healed. I have sources that will back me up in me saying that I was the most avid cleaner of that piercing that they had ever seen. Plus other healing issues, I have deduced that I have healing issues. Sooooooo, not all of these infections can be blamed on my ability to clean it or not. I admit, the first two were my fault. But that last two, those where just random and NOT my fault.
Oh, also, the thing the nurse was apologizing to me for was because a gauge had fallen on my head when I was sleeping in the recovery room. This is the culprit (my mom took the picture):
Apparently the gauge left a huge bump on my forehead and the whole ortho surgery place had to do a write up and an investigation on the falling gauge incident. *We could have sued the *poop* out of them, but being gracious us, we didn't.
And there you have it. The whole story of my wisdom teeth extraction. A bit of a long one, but there were a lot of things that went wrong with me.
P.S. I initially wrote this post in December. I am adding this post script now, in May. Just to let you know, I started to get yet another infection about a month back. I TOLD YOU IT WASN'T MY CLEANING ABILITY'S FAULT THAT I KEPT GETTING INFECTIONS! I just have problems healing. (And I managed to make the infection go away on my own accord... Without having to go to the doctor again.)
