Last Thursday, I had my bottom-right wisdom tooth pulled out. I was surprised how quick it took Dr. Follmar (who, in my opinion, looks kind of like Brian Dennehy) to pull the tooth out. I spent 15 minutes in the waiting room, 15 minutes in the check up room watching an informative video about wisdom teeth removal and getting the right side of my mouth numbed up, and only about 2 minutes getting the tooth pulled out. After I got my tooth pulled out, Dr. Follmar put a piece of gauze in my mouth at the spot of the tooth extraction, and he told me to apply pressure on the gauze to help form a blood clot to stop the bleeding. Then, a nurse gave me an ice pack to apply to my jaw (to reduce the swelling) and told me verbal instructions about what I should do when I got home. She also gave me a bag with a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide, fresh gauze, and some cotton swabs. The bag also contained a sheet of information with the instructions written down (that was good because I was sort of in a dazed fog when she was telling me), and also some additional instructions: No spitting (how hard can that be?), no straws (fine, I won’t use a straw), and no smoking (not a problem. I don’t smoke). When I got home, I read the instructions and followed them the best I could.
I removed the old gauze and had some milk to go with my antibiotic and pain pills (I wanted to eat something, but it’s really hard to open your mouth wide enough to eat anything when your mouth is all numb). After I finished eating came the hard part: I swished my mouth with warm salt water and I brushed my teeth (both without spitting). If you think it’s easy not to spit, go brush your teeth right now, and try to get the toothpaste out of your mouth without spitting. Maybe you think it isn’t that bad, but I found it annoying. The next thing I did was I soaked the cotton swab in the hydrogen peroxide and swabbed the tooth extraction area. After that was all done, I put in a fresh piece of gauze and got a fresh ice pack to hold to my jaw.
The first day was a pain because I had to constantly apply pressure on the gauze and I had to hold the ice pack up to my jaw all day. I couldn’t eat any type of food (I could if I really wanted to, but it would take me such a long time to eat one spoonful of food like applesauce, yogurt, etc. that I gave up and just drank things to satisfy my hunger), and I just had to sit there and stare at the wall because I couldn’t do anything else. No videogames because one hand was always occupied with the ice pack, no talking because I wasn’t understandable with my mouth all numb, and no tiring activity (I think that was a rule because they didn’t want blood circulation to cause the tooth extraction area to start bleeding). I couldn’t concentrate on a book, so I just watched TV, but since I don’t have cable with so many different channels to choose from, I got bored with my limited number of channels.
The second day was better. I cooked six scrambled eggs for breakfast to see if I could handle eating soft foods (which I could and which allowed me to slowly work my way back to regular foods). I ditched the gauze and ice pack (At that point, I didn’t care if my face swelled up, I wasn’t holding an ice pack to my jaw all day). My mouth wasn’t numb anymore, so I could communicate again. My mind cleared up and I was able to focus on reading. I played some Final Fantasy 12. I went to the gym. It seemed like a regular day.
I continued taking antibiotics until the prescription bottle was empty, but I stopped taking the pain pills on Wednesday. Plus, the pain wasn’t intense, so it didn’t bother me. The only thing that bothered me was the no spitting rule and the fact that I had to rinse with salt water and swab after every meal. That’s what I’ve had to do all this week.
Tomorrow at 9:45 AM is my follow up appointment with Dr. Follmar. I should have asked the nurse how long it would be until I could resume spitting right after she told me no spitting, but I didn’t. This time I will ask and hopefully Dr. Follmar will say that I can spit again.
1 comment:
This is a controlled, funny, and mundane narrative—in short, a human story. You've done well with the linked images of common objects—those help give your story visuality. But I kept waiting for a comic book illustration of spitting, since that's a thematic running throughout your post!
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