What Wisdom

Nomi on her blog has been talking about her dental problems - a choice between root canal work and extraction - and it reminded me of my experience of having my lower wisdom teeth out back in 1976.

Everyone I knew who'd had wisdom teeth out had them done in the hospital and had swollen faces and jaws black with bruising. I was having mine done at the dentist's surgery, so I was expecting the worst.

So there I was in the chair with an armful of valium, floating up at the ceiling and thinking, "Ooh, this is taking a long time", not knowing that the first tooth was taking ONE HOUR to remove. The second took only(!) 15 minutes. The teeth had an extra root that didn't show up on the x-ray.

I was lucky - I had no bruising or swelling, but I spent the next two weeks picking bits of broken tooth out from beneath the stitches.

A few years later the same dentist managed to kill a teenage boy. He turned up for treatment involving an anaesthetic without having fasted. He was sent away till the afternoon, but when he was put out he started to turn blue, so they revived him. When he recovered his colour, they carried on - and he died. Funny how no-one would go to that dentist after that...

My current dentist took precisely five seconds to remove one of my upper wisdom teeth a few years ago. I don't have much wisdom left now.