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Wisdom Found; Wisdom Pulled
By Mike O'Brien
Appeared in the Somerset Daily American
March 6, 2002
Well, my wisdom teeth have finally come in (and come out), but I don’t mind telling you that I don’t particularly feel any smarter.
When my back chompers started acting up late last week, the reporter’s reflex kicked in and I began asking co-workers about their experiences with wisdom teeth removal because I realized that I would soon have a story of my own on the topic, whether I liked it or not.
Admittedly, the stories I was told ranged from mildly painful to downright excruciating and I was filled with a certain amount of dread that my yet-to-be-written tale would fall somewhere in between the two.
Across the newsroom, stories began emerging about horrible situations (some authentic, some manufactured simply for my discomfort) involving the extraction of those wisest of teeth.
In particular, City Editor Brian Whipkey concocted a doozie involving a pair of pliers and waking up with a footprint on his chest after he went in to have his own back teeth removed. Stories of this vein did nothing to give me relief about my own date with dental destiny and I went in fearing the worst.
But much to my relief, X-rays revealed that the troublesome teeth had erupted straight through the gum line and therefore presented no great obstacle to removal, according to the doctor. All I had to do was select my level of mental presence for the procedure and let the professionals do the rest.
Because the Daily American’s insurance plan was picking up the tab for the procedure, I decided to go top shelf with the anesthesia; I had previously decided that I would gladly suffer the single prick of an IV line in my arm in order to avoid being mentally present for the forceful evacuation of two of my back teeth.
One of the last things I can recall before going under was looking up at the ceiling from the reclined dentist’s chair and seeing a peaceful pastoral scene of a snowy farmscape that the medical staff had wisely placed there beforehand.
“Here comes the amnesia stuff,” said the doctor as the IV started pushing the knock-out liquid into my arm.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” I think I responded, then faded into the white snowy hills of the picture and the sweet oblivion of sedation.
Forty minutes later and I was back in real time, minus two teeth and a horror story. The doctor said it took as long to knock me out as it did to pull the teeth. But in my book, it was time well spent because I cannot recall a single thing about the painful procedure.
Afterwards, as my mom helped me to her car outside the doctor’s office, a nurse handed me a small envelope containing the evicted teeth, and I suddenly recalled asking the nurses to hold them for me just before I went under. (While you may think it an odd request, the nurses told me that half of all people who have the procedure done ask to see the teeth afterwards. Perhaps it is a desire to see what wisdom looks like, although more likely it is a simple need for people to see what was causing all the pain.)
As my mom dropped me off at my house, she asked if I would be all right by myself.
“I’m at about 80 percent, mom,” I responded, then nearly fell as I got out of the car. “Or maybe a little less than that, but I’ll be all right,” I said as I fumbled for my house keys, armed with the most effective recovery medicine known to man: 200 ccs of mom’s homemade chicken noodle soup.
When I got through the door, my dog Rufus could tell that something was amiss. Perhaps it was because as a result of the numbness in my face, I was drooling more than he was.
“So where have you been all day?” he asked.
“Well, my wisdom teeth came in, but I didn’t take care of them and let them decay, so I ended up losing them,” I told him simply and showed him the teeth now in my hand.
He cocked his head, paused and then looked at his medicated master.
“But now that you’ve taken care of them, you feel a lot better, right? Do you suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here?” he barked back.
Perhaps it says something about me that the wisdom which usually comes to late teenagers only recently began to emerge in my own 26 year-old skull, but the only lesson I could think of at the time was that there are some things that you are better off not remembering.
And I’m just glad that the only horror in my story came when I ran out of soup.
(Mike O’Brien is a recovering staff writer for the Daily American.)
Staff writer Michael J. O’Brien graduated from Boston College in 1997 and has traveled extensively throughout the world before settling in Somerset. His interests include his dog Rufus, Boston Red Sox baseball, reading, and writing a somewhat funny novel.
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