The ordeal of the wisdom tooth

First off, I apologize to my regular readers (yes, all 3 of them) for my extended absence from the blogging scene. The hiatus was inflicted on me by a combination of increased workload, lack of ideas and a wisdom tooth. Of these 3 factors, I would rate the last one - the wisdom tooth - on top of my list.

I've never understood the concept of wisdom tooth/teeth. If these are essentially useless, shouldn't evolution have taken care of this by now? Besides, what sort of lazy ass wisdom tooth would wait till I am about to enter my 30s before deciding to suddenly erupt, touch my nerve endings and cause me such immense pain?!! This takes away the whole concept of the tooth being called the 'wisdom' tooth, considering I've probably already gained all the wisdom I'm likely to gain in my life. Atleast, I would like to think so. Now, this has resulted in me being the target of a lot of ill-conceived jokes - especially from my wife - about me gaining wisdom quite late in life, and that its better late than never, and more of such lame stuff.

Anyways, enough of my rambling. So I waited out a few days for this pain to go away. And when I realized that it was here for the long haul, I forced myself to make my first dentist appointment in the US (till now, all my dentist visits have been during my India visits). As I feared, the dentist told me, no, ordered me, to remove both my wisdom teeth (although only one was causing trouble). Besides, the neighboring tooth might be contaminated by now and might have to be removed as well. I knew this would happen. My inner paranoid self had always believed that if there's one thing I know about US doctors, it is that they love to suck you into a vortex of procedures, operations, side-effect treatments etc.

So I take the referral and go to a dental surgeon. And the receptionist tells me that I might have trouble getting my insurance company covering both wisdom tooth removals from the same referral. This surprises me. I would think Insurance companies can save a lot of time and money by encouraging multiple procedures for a patient in one sitting. But apparently, they do not like to do this because they cover only 'necessary' extractions, not 'precautionary' ones. So I decide to just pull one tooth out. It was probably the mst painful dental experience of my life. The tooth was growing at a weird angle, and the dentist used a combination of techniques, bordering on the savage, to get it out. There was sawing, pulling, tugging and some old-fashioned yelling till the damned bloody calcium-filled miserable piece of my body came out.

My wife drove me home, with me holding a tissue to plug the blood spurting out of the new hole where the erstwhile wisdom tooth used to be. I was told not to spit, gargle or do anything useful with my mouth until the blod clot forms on the hole. Just about the only good thing that came out of the whole episode was that I could call in sick at work and enjoy a Tamil movie after a long time ('Paruthiveeran' to the curious!). Then began the 'recovery' phase that started with around 50 pills that included painkillers and antibiotics. But when the pain had not abated after a week, I went back and was told I had what is referred to as a 'dry socket inflammation'. This is a very common post-operative procedure, where the blod clot might have moved causing the newly growing tissues to be exposed to food, water etc causing a completely different kind of weird, throbbing pain. So I was given a further dose of another 50 pills, this time consisting of some steroid and another dose of antibiotics.

Through the whole ordeal, the one thing that really irked me was the fact that I had to stay away from alcohol through weekends. This is not easy when you are surrounded by a gang of raging weekend alcoholics and party-goers. I did push the limit with a bit of wine here and a beer there, but for the most part I was a good boy. So eventually, after about a 100 pills and 2 weeks of suffering, I've finished my dosage, the pain is gone and I can go on with the rest of my life.

But only for a few more days. If you had stayed with me through this story, you would realize I still have the other wisdom tooth to go. On top of this, I have another appointment with the dentist, where he will determine if I get to keep the tooth next to the wisdom dude. If not, I will have to face further ignominy, and pull out this innocent bystander as well. So you will forgive me if I have nothing nice to say on the topic of dentists and their happy-go-lucky attitude towards other people's teeth and limb. And if I go into another blogging hiatus, you'll know why...