I went to have my wisdom teeth extracted yesterday day. The surgeon was very good. Some professor who is super experienced and needed only 5 minutes to remove each tooth. There was an Indian dentist observing and he was very impressed too. When I returned home, I didn't realise the anaesthesia would wear off so fast and didn't take the painkillers immediately. OOOHHHhhhh... then it was like hell man. felt like chopping off my head to lessen the pain. But after I took the painkillers and curled up in bed for half an hour, the pain vanished. I think the painkillers must contain morphine or something. I'm going to become a morphine addict like Mary Tyrone (JC lit text character)

But the interesting part of dental surgery is the operation itself, not the post-op suffering. So this was what happened:

First, the surgeon put a topical anaesthetic on my gums. Then, he injected each side with 2 syringes of anaesthetic. Each syringe took two jabs to be emptied so it was a total of 4 jabs on each side. But due to a miscommunication between the coffee shop auntie-like nurse and the surgeon, he thought I wanted to remove my upper jaw wisdom teeth too. So on my left side, I received a additional 4 jabs on the upper gums before the mistake was realised. The surgeon was quite happy because I didn't wince at all when he jabbed me. High pain tolerance, you see. He was telling me how most of the big tough guys he operated on before winced before the needle even touched them.
After the anaesthesia took effect, my gums and throat and lips went numb and I could feel sharp pain. I could only feel pressure but it wasn't painful at all. The auntie nurse covered my eyes with a cloth to protect from the sharp operating instruments. I asked that the surgeon to give me a running commentary on what he was going to do because I wanted to know when he was going to cut or pull etc. First, a trapezoidal flap of skin/gum was cut and pulled back to expose the buried tooth. Then, some digging around was done to get a good grip. Then, the tooth was sawn in half for easy removal. Then, a plier like thing was used to crack the tooth all the way through as the saw could not reach down to the places still covered by the gums. More digging around followed. The 2 halved were pulled out one after another. Finally, the wound was stitched up with needle and thread. Everything was repeated on the other side to remove the other lower jaw wisdom tooth. Thankfully, the mistake of injecting the upper gum was not repeated. This all sounds gory and horrible and it was. Blood was gurgling out of my mouth. But due to the anaesthetic, I didn't feel a thing. You could have cut my lips and I wouldn't have felt a thing. The pain only came afterwards when the drugs wore off.

So now I'm constantly on painkillers. Thank you God for painkillers. The one I'm taking is called Ibuprofen or something. Anybody can confirm if it actually contains morphine? I would like to know. The surgeon said that it is sometimes also prescribed for menstrual pain.

Hope I didn't put you off your food.

Talking about food, I'm on a liquid diet again (last time it was when I got my braces). I eat soup, soft-boiled eggs, yogurt, mash potatoes and ice-cream. Not a bad way to life actually.

And if anybody has any plans to ask me out to ogle at the stitches, forget it. My cheeks are swollen and I look like a bloody chipmunk. I'm not stepping out of the house anytime soon. Not in this state.