Things you might not know will happen...

...when your wisdom teeth leave this world. (Nellie Vaughn, this is for you.)


Now mind you, my dentist is awesome. Not only did she and her assistant make sure I was super numb and comfortable, but they told me how well I did. I felt like I was in kindergarten, gold star for me!

A bit of shameless self-congrats here: the teeth were loose, but I only had numbing. No sedation, no nitrus, and haven't taken any of the prescribed Vicodin. I am a fucking rock star.

Anyhow, my dentist was very good about going over things and then gave me a piece of paper with all of those things printed on it so I did not have to scribble. However, here are a few things that you might want to know about if you happen to have this surgery done in the future, that will not be anticipated for you by any dental professional.

1. Drinking will be a challenge at first. Read: you will get water all over your face, and you will slurp. That's right! Normally elegant, graceful you will need to hydrate yourself, but the numbing from your procedure will in fact take HOURS to wear off. Hence, be prepared to be not so graceful.

2. You will look like a vampire. You may be told that the places your teeth used to live are "forming blood clots" during the first 24 hours and "you may bleed a little." Translation: little drops of blood will make their way to your face, right near your lips. It looks like you got hungry and maybe attacked a farm animal on the way home.

3. Soup cans are the enemy. If you are like me, you like to make your own soup from scratch (or better, have someone make it for you.) If you have a very kind spouse/partner/friend who gets lots of soup from the store for you, make sure s/he gets the kind that can be opened with a can opener while said spouse is at work. Because those ones with a pulley thing...well, the pulley thing can pop off. Then they won't be opened with a can opener, because they don't fucking feel like it. This is CRUEL for a hungry person who can only have liquids. I am going to complain to the people at Progresso. Tip for the uninitiated: if this happens to you, carefully use a table knife to get it the rest of the way open. That way your fingers remain intact.

4. There are, unfortunately, some people will not give a flying fuck that you are basically under ibuprofen sedation/tired as fucking hell from having teeth yanked out of your mouth. These people will text you the day after your afternoon surgery, not to ask how you are doing, but to ask if you are at work and when you are going to proofread something for them, or to see if you are coming to the volunteer meeting the next night. Your answer: FUCK NO!

5. Say your very kind spouse/partner/friend, who well deserves to be sick of your sick person shit by now, as well as his role as errand runner/drink fetcher/back rubber is still in a good enough mood to take you to dinner. When you finally feel un-dopey enough to venture into the outside world, you will want to eat EVERYTHING sharp and pointy that you are not supposed to eat - just because you can't. You will want chips at the Mexican restaurant, and you will only be saved from yourself by said partner, who will whisk away the basket from your outstretched hand and say, "NO! YOU WILL CRY!" and then offer to stop eating chips as a gesture of solidarity. You will, of course, decline his gesture and then drool over every salsa-laden chip he eats.

Then your good friend will come over with chocolate-covered walnuts. Then you will start craving popcorn. You'll be surprised that you have not cried yet because you can't have these things.

Yes...all of this really happened. And yes, Mr. RK is a fucking saint. I probably owe him a cruise at this point.

So know you know what to expect that is not in the postsurgery fine print.

You're welcome ;)