One Tooth Less

After 15 years, i finally got rid of my other 'wisdom' tooth yesterday...

Why the delay?

My first experience was just too freaking painful, excruciating, to be precise.

15 years ago...

1. The dentist jabbed my gum to numb the area.


2. Then, he cut the gum near my tooth (i could still hear the knife scrapping against my jaw bone, no pain at all... just the sound)


3. Next, he drilled my tooth (i could still hear the sound of drilling) and nurse used the suction tube to suck out all the tooth fragments, blood and saliva (i could still hear the suction sound)


4. He stopped, checked, poked, and drilled again.


5. Then, he tried to extract what's left of my tooth, i think the roots, (i could still feel the pressure applied) but failed.


6. He drilled again, stopped.


7. He proceeded to extract again... and out popped the first root, then the second, then the third.


8. Next, he sewed up the gaping, bleeding hole.


9. Lastly, he popped in a gauze on the wound... and voila! i was done in 30 minutes!

i took the green T.U.T. bus, stopped at my bus stop and walked 15 minutes under the blazing sun to reach home. i remember reaching home at 3.35 p.m., washed up, changed, sat down...

And then the pain came, dull throbbing pain, gradually increasing in intensity.

It was intense and the ever-ready me took out one packet of freezing cold ice and applied it on my jaw. And my jaw/face was in pain too, caused by the freezing ice... so removed the ice from my super numb face, wait until the numbness ebb away and the pain returned and put on the ice pack again. And that was basically what i did the whole evening.

Paracetamol / Panadol could not do the trick. It was hard enough to pop in the pill and swallow it with my head tilted to one side.

Could not even swallow H2O properly... could only open my mouth no wider than one 1 1/2 finger... could not eat dinner (or porridge, to be precise)... could not sleep properly that night (thank God it was Friday)... could not brush the rest of my teeth... could smell my pig breath... could taste blood the whole night...

On the following Monday, i went to school with a visible bruise on my jaw, cleverly hidden by my hair... and i realized it was photo-taking session T__T

(Back then i was too vain and uneducated to know that the small class photo on the printed black-and-white pages of school magazine is not capable of highlighting such miniscule bruise.)

After the wound had healed, it took me nearly one year before i was able to open my mouth to its maximum capacity, at its widest... errr... to gobble down food? to laugh? to sing? to shout? to yawn? Heck! Even yawning was painful.

The pain's gone now but the memory remains... (to be continued)

TakSiokLangsung O.O