Since Tuesday's post, I can't stop getting sad about poor little baby slow lorises getting their teeth pulled out. Maybe I'm just extra sensitive to the idea because I once experienced a painful, horrific tooth extraction myself. So I can relate. Getting my wisdom teeth out was one of the most dreadful things that has ever happened to me.
As I've mentioned before, I come from a super small town. And the dentist my family went to (who was my dad's third cousin or something) was in an even smaller town. And it was located in a building that was also a library part of the time. Maybe you can see where this is going.
Obviously, this particular dentist did not offer general anesthesia. But he did shoot me up with novocaine and provided a steady stream of nitrous oxide. And I had my iPod. And for some reason I only had two wisdom teeth (my top two have just never existed). So I figured it couldn't be too terrible. I was wrong. It turned into a gory, tortuous ordeal.
The tooth on my right side slid right out, but the one on the left put up a fight. The dentist pulled at it, and pried at it, and yanked at it. The novocaine did nothing against what felt like the dentist wrenching on my jaw with his entire body weight. Tears were rolling out the corners of my eyes and into my ears. And that's when it got worse.
"It looks like this tooth is growing sideways," My dentist told me. "It's sort of wedged beneath the one next to it. I need to get at it from another angle."
"Yes! Do whatever it takes to just get this over with!" (I screamed this inside of my head. Since my mouth was propped open and filled with cotton, I most likely just nodded wildly and grunted a bit.)
"Okay. I'm going to get my saw and cut away about a quarter inch of bone."
And that is what he proceeded to do. He took a saw to my mouth and cut out a chunk of my jaw bone. While I was awake. And barely drugged.
The fucker finally came out, and I rode home drooling blood into a bucket on my lap.
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