So, last Friday I went to an oral surgeon guy for a consultation about my tooth. And it turns out I need to get one of my top back ones removed because my evil wisdom teeth destroyed it back when they were coming in all perpendicular ten years ago. I had them removed at nineteen (in a procedure that left my face bruised, and gave me dry sockets and access to 3 bottles of Percoset), but I guess it was too late. They had already eaten into their nieghbors. So, this upper back molar on the right needs to be removed or else these dentists say it will become inflamed int he future because it has a hollow area through the middle of its root, and there is gum tissue migrating in there.

The oral surgeon told me that I have a low sinus cavity and that the tooth's root is very close to the sinus cavity. He told me that the sinus wall is as thin as an eggshell. He said that there is a fifty-fifty chance that the extraction will puncture it. When he told me this, I almost jumped out of the chair and fled the office. The words "puncture" and "sinus" do not go well together.

The doctor saw he was about to lose me, so he began to talk about the sedation. He said he would need me completely sedated because he could not numb the sinus tissue. I would be taking a drug that is from the Valium family intravenously. He said this drug is better than Valium, because Valium stings when given via I.V. He realized that it would take more than promises of non-stinging intravenous downers to get me to come back into his office for the extraction, so he gave me a little bottle with two little gray pills in it. He told me to take one the night before the operation, and the other the morning slated for the tooth's removal.

Now I have two Valium's in my purse, and I have to save them until September. I almost took one to ease the come-down from e last weekend, but the thought of facing the oral surgeon without initital sedation scared me too much.

I don't know how I managed to get to the doctor for the wisdom teeth thing. This is only one tooth, and they were all four. And that guy didn't give me any Valium pills to coax me in. Which leads me to wonder, is this [i.e. my 2 little Valiums] a product of a California versus Massachusetts thing? or a product of treating a twentysomething adult versus a teenaged child thing? or a product of 2001 versus 1993?

Need to know more?
Read my previous journal entry, (May 23, 2001).

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