Post-Surgery

I never realized that spicy food had such an impact on me. For the past 2 days, I have had to do with bland, semi-solid fare, and the experience has been excruciating. Another fact that seems to have reached home is that I am not really a big fan of ice creams. Yes, I do enjoy the occasional scoops, but is it a substitute for real food? Nope!
I long for some steaming hot sambhar with some spicy curry. And sadly, I can’t have any of these for atleast a week. :(

And now to the actual surgery, I am all in support for the “being frank and sincere” school of thought of dentists. But when you are reclining on that chair, and have your mouth pulled wide open, and then have him thrust some kind of medieval torture device into your mouth and begin to yank the tooth with god almighty might…the last thing I want to see is a shake of the head and a “No…its too tough. It is going to be a struggle”. But that’s exactly what my dentist tells his intern!! I have changed my mind now…hell to frankness. Lets have some good old-fashioned “straight face while lying your guts out”.

Remember the old computer game called Dave? Well, for most part of the surgery all I could think of was this game. There are levels in this game when you have a jetpack for a limited amount of time, and whenever I used to play the game I had this jittery feeling regarding when the jetpack would expire and let me fall down an abyss or a hellfire. That’s the exact same thing I wondered about my local anesthesia. After hearing the sawing of the bone, creaking of my jawbones from the yanking, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if the anesthesia just stopped working.

I can’t imagine the possibility even now.

After all the cribbing, now to some good things. The root of my wisdom tooth was shaped like a hockey-stick (in the words of the dentist). He had given up hope of taking it out in one piece as one part of the root was eager to come out while the other wasn’t. I was doing my best to be the bad host and get the damn thing off my mouth. But any increase of effort from my side was at the most a widening of the mouth. Not enough to get that wretched little thing out.

But then came those golden words. “Lucky!…I have just one word for you – lucky”. Just as the dentist begin his final yanking, out came the tooth in one shape. I had no words to express my joy. Neither did I have a proper mouth to express my words. But I did my best to smile, or something faintly resembling it.

Now I can look back at the entire operation in a less gloomy light. I can even look at the time when dentist asked his intern to increase the volume when Winamp began to play “Take it Easy, Urvashi” as less sarcastic, and more salutary. Circumstances…its all got to do with the circumstances.

All’s well that ends painlessly. I would like to dedicate this post to the person who discovered/invented local anesthesia.

Oh another thing. Check out this link – it is Stephen King’s graduation speech for the students of UMaine. Just one word – beautiful.