Beech Tree News Network

I had two teeth removed last week, extracted if you want to use the dental term.  One tooth was giving me grief, because it had shifted into a sinus cavity, and the other had decayed beneath the filling to the point that it could not be saved.  The tooth that decayed beyond saving did so because I can’t feel my bottom lip, the inside of the bottom of my mouth or my chin.  I can’t feel any of these areas because the oral surgeon who extracted my wisdom teeth severed one or more nerves in the area, while removing the teeth.  I didn’t realize I had any problems with the molar until the morning I awoke with a swollen face and tingling in my chin.
    Before the extraction, the oral surgeon—not the one who caused the severed-nerve debacle—went through a list of possible problems that could occur during this particular surgery.  He had the
X-ray of my mouth in front of him as he spoke.  The list went something like this:  If you hear a loud crack, that means your jawbone has broken, and we’ll have to take you to the hospital to get it repaired; if there is a perforation to your sinus, while I’m removing this upper tooth, you’ll have to have sutures; there is a possibility of damaging the crown while I’m removing that back molar next to it; and there is a nerve running right under the same molar that could be accidentally severed in the process, which would cause quite a bit of numbness that wouldn’t go away. 
    “Do you understand?” he asked.
    “All too well,” I wanted to say, but just answered “yes” instead.
    The assistant turned on the nitrous oxide (laughing gas).  She didn’t intend to give me enough to knock me out, just enough to keep me calm during the procedure.  “Breathe normally,” she said.
  The surgeon started a series of what felt like twenty-five Novocain shots, two particularly bothersome ones to the roof of my mouth.  I must have started to hyperventilate because the assistant once again said, “Breathe normally.”
    When the mask of nitrous oxide covered my nose and mouth, I was transported back to another time.  I was five years old, rolling down the hall of a Louisville hospital on a gurney.  I was a wild banshee of a patient, slapping and screaming at nurses giving me shots and doctors giving them orders.  They wheeled me into surgery, where a mask descended from a metal arm above my face to cover my nose and mouth.  I pushed against it with all my might, but eventually succumbed to its effect and slept though the ensuing surgery.  I awoke with a large cast that covered my left foot and leg up to my hip.
    It was the summer before I was to start first grade, and it turned into one of the best summers of my childhood.  My older sisters and their friend, Betty Jean, from next door catered to my beck and call and carried me around for two solid months.  I think it was the only two months while I was growing up that I wasn’t spanked or yelled at for something or the other. 
The details of the accident that landed me in the hospital when I was five are still fresh in my mind.  I can see the rimless coffee can, catching the drips of dirty water from the faulty pipe that ran from the sink to the floor.  I can see my small foot split in two as I pulled myself up the side of the tub, my sisters screaming, my stepmom the only one with the presence of mind to squeeze my foot back together with a large bath towel.
I didn’t realize how much the accident affected my stepmom until many years later when I tried to talk to her about it.  She broke down when she told me she never believed I was grateful that she had saved my life.  By that time, I was old enough to recognize her words were the cry of deep seeded guilt.  The truth is it wasn’t her fault.  We lived in deplorable conditions much of my growing-up years, and to add insult to injury, my dad would never fix anything that was in disrepair.
That rimless can had its own effect on me.  I see hazards everywhere.  I am constantly wiping up spills or moving shoes from the middle of the floor or picking up my granddaughter’s Little People from the edge of the bathtub.  I think the reason I love hand tools is because I want to make sure broken things are repaired as quickly as possible.
Back in the dentist’s chair, the oral surgeon has just removed the second tooth.  “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,” he says.  “You did remarkably well!”
It was just a tooth, I thought, but didn’t say because of the gauze packed into both sides of my mouth.  After your foot has been sliced in-two, everything else is pretty much a cake walk.