As I sat in the oral surgeon's extraction chair, I wondered what he would do if I simply unclasped the bib and bolted out the door. But as an obedient patient, I sat there clenching the armrests with unparalleled force and vowed never again to do a " preemptive extraction."
The tooth didn't really hurt, but it did make what my dentist calls 'noise'- like the rumblings of a volcano letting me know that sooner or later, most likely on a Saturday night after knocking back a few cocktails, it would erupt, making the pain of childbirth feel like an eyebrow waxing.
My sister had an old wisdom tooth removed last year and told me that it was simple.
"He numbed it and gave it a tug and out it came. It was nothing."
A few pinches of novocaine here and there and I loosened my grip, even crossed my legs and lowered my shoulders. This was going to be easy.
He took his tools and began to loosen the old gal. But she wasn't going down with a fight.
"Hmmm...the tooth is just crumbling...not an easy extraction," the surgeon mumbled. "Get me the longest sharpest hooked tool that you can find and some rope" was what I thought he said. It was late in the day and he was obviously not in the mood for a difficult extraction.
Well, that man dug and hammered and chiseled that damn tooth out for over 45 minutes. Had I known that the tooth was quite comfortable in my jaw, I would have left her there for a few more months. But as I age, the more angst ridden I become...the 'what if's' begin to outnumber the 'what the hell's' and before I had given it any real thought, I was sitting in his chair.
"You've got strong roots."
"Well, thank you," I said. "I drink milk."
"Hmm...this is when you really don't want them," he muttered.
I felt like the roots were wrapped around my skull, like a twisted ancient hemlock. After 45 minutes, the old fang, looking like a pile of cremated remains, was strewn across the paper lined tray.
"You'll need this" the Doc said, handing me a script for Vicodin.
"Oh, I don't think so. I don't like taking those drugs."
"No, you'll need it. It was a tough one." The nurse raised her eyebrows.
So I filled the script and popped a tablet. And within a half hour, this gentle feeling of contentment washed over me, like a soft breeze on a sticky day. I looked at my two teens who were busy fighting with one another to worry about Mom and the hole in her jaw. And their fighting didn't even bother me. They could have been hanging from the light fixtures and I would have thought, "Wow, what wonderfully athletic children I have." The house could have been set afire and I would have stared wistfully at the flames.
I've renamed Vicodin the "I Love My Family Pills."
If we had everyone popping these little guys, there wouldn't be any fighting -ever. George and Saddam would have been running in the desert hand in hand instead of tearing down statues and Rush and Keith would be having a mancation together.
As I sat at the dinner table, admiring my offspring, my daughter asked if I was going to put the old tooth under my pillow for Gwendolyn, the tooth fairy.
"She'd need a Dustbuster to vacuum up all the fragments," I said. No, that tooth went into the garbage bin along with the other dozens of old fangs that were yanked out yesterday.
Getting old really stinks.
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