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Oral Surgery

"It kind of feels like you're high...." My sister's friend Maddy told me when I told her that I'd be getting laughing gas at my oral surgery. I asked her how she knows what high feels like. "Well.... I don't. But I'm guessing that's how it feels. Don't worry. It's really fun. I started laughing when I got it." Okay, well, that didn't sound too bad. It certainly put a little damper on the butterflies in my stomach. The fact is, I was seriously more freaked out about getting laughing gas than I was about getting a needle jabbed into my gums. I don't know what it is with me and mood changing substances- they just kind of scare me.

I stayed up until two in the morning hoping that being extremely tired at my 7:50 appointment might ease my nerves a bit. It did not. I was shaky as ever as I got into the oral surgeon's chair and listened to the assistant go over what exactly was going on. My heart jumped when I saw her take out one of those finger-clip thingies that monitors your pulse and oxygen levels. "This will monitor your pulse and oxygen levels," she said. "It's amazing what one finger can do." I was scared to death, because whenever I had seen those, I had always presumed that there was some sort of needle inside of them that slipped inside of your finger. How else could you get a blood oxygen level reading from a finger? To my relief, there was no needle hiding inside of the clip and it just slipped onto my finger and had the television in the corner of the room emit little beeping noises when my heart beat.

Another assistant came in and started to set up the laughing gas tube stuff. Then the oral surgeon came in. I was shaking a lot and the television in the corner was beating out very fast "beepbeepbeep" noises. I tried to control my breathing as they lowered the gas mask over my nose and told me to breath through it. For a moment I noticed nothing. There was no sudden finger and toe tingling and giggling like the doctor warned at our meeting last week. One of the assistants told me that the gas was on. I couldn't tell, but I breathed more through my nose. They doctor started rubbing my gums with pre-anesthetic gel to numb them before the novocain.

Then it hit me. And it was none of that warm and fuzzy comfort that other people had described it as. You know that feeling when you're sick and you feel like you're completely out of your body? Like everything you touch, hear, and see isn't actually going on? Like your entire being and soul has been pushed back into a tiny little corner of your brain? Combine that with the feeling that you get when you stand up to fast and the feeling you get after your head has been slammed with every volume of an Encyclopedia Britanica. That is how laughing gas feels. The doctor asked me how I felt. "Oh, a little tired," I said. I was a little shocked at how fast my response was. I actually felt like I was falling through the back of the chair into a churning ocean.

My brain started to adjust a bit as the doctor got the novocain ready. I still felt incredibly out-of-body, but if I focused hard enough, it didn't feel like my head was spinning off into outer space. "You might want to breath through your nose a lot now," one of the assistants said as the doctor lowered the novocain into my mouth. He told me that I was going to feel a small pinch. And then another pinch. And then a really, really big pinch. I pushed my thumbnail hard into my index finger and curled my toes hard at the last big pinch and again as he did it on the other side of my mouth.

Everything from that point on went by really fast. I didn't feel a thing as he pulled both of my teeth out with such speed and ease that I was amazed, murky-headed as I was. "You might feel a little bit of pressure. And a weird noise," they told me as he yanked out my tooth. I felt no pressure and heard no noise. Just felt my head wiggle a bit and then POP! There was my tooth in front of my face, being held by the doctor's pliers.

I was leaned far back enough that I could look upside-down at the clock behind me. Whoa! I had been there nearly forty five minutes. It felt like I had been there only five. Must have been the gas. The doctor finished off by attaching a chain to a tooth that's lodged somewhere up in my gums so it can come down. Then they took off the gas mask and stuffed my face with gauze. I waited about five minutes, one of the assistants came back, gave me new gauze and escorted me out to the waiting room.

The rest of the day was much more uncomfortable than the actual procedure. I had my father get my prescriptions from Target (because they have cool bottles) and he dropped me off at home. My mouth didn't stop bleeding for several hours and I was running every five minutes or so to spit blood out of my mouth and stuff my mouth with paper towels. After a bit, the novocain started to wear off and my mouth started to hurt. Luckily, my father got home with the two pain medications, antibiotic, and mouth wash that I had been prescribed. I feel kinda cool since I'm taking the same pain medication that House takes on House M.D. but I don't understand how he can go save peoples lives when it makes you so drowsy. I've basically been lying around for the past day and a half watching Will & Grace on DVD.

August 25, 2005 at 06:05 PM

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