Blow Up

  “What happened to you? Were you in a fight? Why are your cheeks all blown up?” These were some of the questions asked by the teachers who saw the aftermath of my oral surgery to remove my wisdom teeth, when I was back at my desk Monday morning. I suffered with intense pain on both sides of my gums for months, and decided to have all four of my wisdom teeth removed on a Friday afternoon.
Instead of pushing the surgery off until the summer, or a later date, I decided to have it done during the school year. I could not deal with the pain anymore, and felt that if I would delay the procedure, it would only worsen. I went into Dr. Jacobson’s office on a spring day, after I came home from school. He gave me shot after shot in the four corners of my mouth. The injections made my stomach feel as though I was on the steep drop of a rollercoaster. My mother is afraid of anesthesia, so I was given nitrous oxide instead. At first I was on a high, but after a while the effect wore off. The doctor did not realize it, and sang a silly song to the assistant saying, “Oh, Rachel has no idea what’s going on…”
Two days later, still sore and swollen, my summer job was having a staff meeting. I was going to meet all of the people I was to be working with in the summer as a camp waitress. Instead of saying, “Forget it, I can’t go to the meeting looking like a nutcase on painkillers, who can’t eat anything but yogurt and applesauce”, I went with my sister, who also was going to be a waitress. I tried to smile even though I could not really move my mouth.
Little by little, the swelling went down, and I began to feel like a normal human being again. I could stop eating baby food and soup, and eat real food. The headaches I had experienced from the pain disappeared. Now, I am the expert on wisdom teeth removal, and all my friends call me before their surgeries.