bloody gauze and applesauce

A Story by ink

wisdom tooth surgery

I hadn’t thought getting my wisdom teeth out would be that terrible. I ate some pineapple the night before to help with swelling, had looked up comparisons of erupted teeth versus impaction. I was getting all four teeth out, three of which were erupted or through the gum, and would be easily removed. The last one was still buried under a layer of tissue, and, based on the descriptions I read, it would be a b***h to remove.

Oh goodie, I thought. Mom told me to stop looking at the websites and enjoy my night. I glanced at her. It was a few days before Christmas and the last thing I wanted was to be a chipmunk in all the pictures.

My surgery was in the morning on the eighteenth of December. My brother swung open the door to my bedroom, bounding inside with the energy of someone half his age and with the volume of a crying newborn. I buried my head under the covers as he ripped open my curtains, letting the painfully bright sun pour into my room. A few choice words and lifted fingers later he finally left, chuckling to himself.

I pulled myself out of bed, trying not to cringe when my feet hit the cold hardwood floor. My stomach complained about being empty. I ignored it and brushed my teeth. I’d already been put under anesthesia three times before �"two knee surgeries and an endoscopy, where they shoved a camera down my throat- I was used to the irritating lack of food in my stomach.

Mom drove me to the doctor’s office. I signed in and sat down next to her, trying ignore the tension from the parents in the room. An older woman came from behind the door, calling my name from her clipboard. I lumbered behind her into the same room my initial exam had been in, sitting in the dentist chair that looked like it was designed to kill someone.

The laughing gas smelled weird. I don’t have enough of a memory of it to describe it otherwise; the medicines they used to knock me out got rid of the last few minutes of memory from when I know I was conscious. I remember giggling though.

When I awoke, I had two rolled-up gauze pads shoved into the back of my mouth, each with a long string of waxed floss tied to them for easy removal. Only the lingering effects of the drug kept me from gagging.

Another nurse, a woman who couldn’t have been much older than me, had me put my arm over her shoulders as she led me to a recovery nook in a nearby room. I laid on the small bed and felt the drugs surge again, trying to claim me back to the land of sweet darkness. Mom talked to the woman in the next nook who was waiting for her daughter. Mom told me in too cheery of a voice the girl’s name; I had gone to school with her from fifth grade until we graduated high school almost two years ago. She was the basketball girl, and I was the swimming girl.

The young nurse came back to check on me. She gave me a disposable icepack and made me sit up, making sure the drugs were wearing off. I made an unintelligent noise.

A few minutes later I trudged out to the car, dreaming of passing out again. At home, the couch had been set up for me- a bowl of my favorite cinnamon applesauce, two bottles of prescription pain-killers, movies, big pillows, blankets, my laptop, the dog, and the remote control to the fifty-two inch flat screen. I pulled on the floss, cringing as the blood tried to keep them suctioned into place. Bloody gauze swung in the air when they finally popped free.

Later on, I managed to slurp down some applesauce to take a vicodin. I could feel blood go down with every swallow. I tried to block out the thought and settled back for a nap, a bag of ice propped up against my face.

The night passed uneventfully, my face blissfully half-frozen. Mom slept on the bog chair beside the couch, like she has for all my surgeries, just in case I needed something in the middle of the night. The next morning I swallowed more applesauce with my drugs, feeling the ends of my stitches move and brush against my swollen gums. I watched my family shovel the driveway from the safety of the couch, slightly smug that I wasn’t out there with them in the knee-deep snow. I texted my friend Andrew all day, my face numb and body practically empty.

Andrew had his wisdom teeth out a few years before- he and his younger sister got them out at the same time. My brother didn’t need to get his out, I responded, but he had to get the deviated septum in his nose fixed so I think we’re even. It was the only reason I hadn’t killed him the morning he woke me up.

That night I did something I hadn’t done since I was probably eleven or twelve years old. Something that was a perfectly normal bodily function when said body didn’t like what was in its stomach. Something that my brain tells me to freak out about.

I hadn’t been getting enough food in me to counteract the effect of vicodin on my stomach, which, paired with an advanced form of acid reflux disease, left me curled around the toilet most of the night, puking up the medicines and applesauce I’d eaten and the acids that rampaged my stomach. Mom later told me that sometimes, during this kind of surgery, patients swallow a lot of blood while they’re under anesthesia. I assumed blood was in the mix that was flushed down the toilet.

I watched tv all night, my stomach still rebelling even though there wasn’t even acid left in it. The ice packs on my face began to hurt more than help, sending shots of cold agony down my jaw. I pulled my laptop closer and tried to distract myself. Opening a Word doc, I wrote, some nights you suffer with a breathless scream because putting voice to your pain won’t make it go away.

I wouldn’t eat applesauce again and refused to take any more vicodin. I have a high pain tolerance, probably built up from living and swimming with a torn meniscus in my knee for two years and from my irritating habit of serious injuries. Even when I got a titanium bar pierced through two parts of my ear, the pain was incredible but manageable. Over-the-counter ibuprofen barely began to cover the pain in my mouth, even when I took four pills when Mom wasn’t looking. I was barely eating anything, terrified of a repeat of that night. Andrew helped keep me sane, sending pictures of his Grandfather’s farm, of his snow-covered home, telling me it would all end eventually.

The days passed slowly, the pain gradually receding until it was just a general throbbing in the back of my mouth. I managed to eat again, although in pathetic amounts compared to my normal appetite.

Google told me to try a heating pad on my face instead of ice. It was the only thing that dimmed the pain enough to let me sleep; I’d have the pad on high heat for a couple minutes, feeling like I was scorching my face, before shutting it off and trying to fall asleep before the heat dissipated.

Getting up from the couch was a task: peel off the blankets. Move the dog. Both feet on the ground. Make sure the room isn’t spinning. Push upward. Don’t fall over. Move one foot. Steady self. Move other foot. Hold arms out for balance if needed. Don’t pass out.

When I was strong enough to walk up the stairs, I weighed myself on my parent’s scale. Down almost six pounds from before surgery. I shrugged and dreamed of the amazing pizza from a nearby Italian joint. My stomach growled in longing.

That night I had some of Mom’s amazing spaghetti. Her homemade sauce would make the whole house smell amazing and made my mouth water whenever I inhaled. After my tiny bowl though, I had an incredible pain in my lower left jaw. Checking the hole in the mirror �"barely able to open my mouth wide enough to see that far back- I saw the end of a small piece of spaghetti sticking out from the hole. Mom asked why I was laughing and after I told her, I asked where the tweezers where. A few minutes and curses later, I pulled a piece of noodle about half an inch long from my gum.

I got out of the house the fourth or fifth day after surgery, wandering to the YMCA to swim a little. I could barely open my mouth wide enough to breathe, and the water pressure on my face when I pushed off the wall was almost too much, but being in the water again felt good. I swam a few hundred yards before getting out. Being accident-prone me, I slipped on the wet tile and bashed my shin into the tiled lip of the pool, sending shock waves up my leg. Andrew laughed when I told him, asking if I’d hurt the torn tendon in my wrist, too.

By Valentine’s Day the stitches were gone, small craters in my gums the only physical reminder to what was. I have bruise and a lump on my shin from falling on the pool deck. I haven’t taken anything stronger than ibuprofen since the surgery, despite cortisone shots and aggravating past injuries. And I still can’t eat applesauce.