The Smart Teeth

I felt compelled to find an article about wisdom teeth since I am having mine yanked out next Tuesday.

(photo credit to http://www.extremefunnyhumor.com/pics/doggy_dentures.jpg)

An article from the dailygleaner.com reports on the ongoing debate of whether or not to pull out those third molars. 

Apparently, two thirds of all wisdom teeth pulled are unnecessarily done, and is a waste of money, becoming just a routine surgery and paycheck for oral surgeons.

After a convention on the topic, the consensus was that if wisdom teeth caused direct problems, then they should be pulled out (hm... took a convention to figure that one out?).

Well, in my case, I have not really thought much about the surgery, in fact, I should probably mull over the concept a little more before I have my gums cut open. The surgery is safe, harmless, but still, having something removed from your body feels weird, feels wrong. I cannot imagine how cancer patients and organ transplant patients must feel having things cut out from themselves. One can never feel whole. These four teeth, however useless, feel like a part of me, and I guess somewhere, somehow I feel like I will lose a part of myself with it. 

This kind of screws up my spring break. It takes about a week to recover from the cutting and the sawing and the pulling and the stitching and the bleeding and the pain. That, and taking 800 mg of ibuprofen a day (hooray). I wonder I if my bike counts as machinery, I really do not want to end up stuck in my house all week because of some painkillers. 

Anyway, expect to see a different person two Mondays from now, expect to see a person that was hopped up on pain killers for a week, expect to see a person missing something, expect a person with 28 teeth (maybe less than you).