All Wisdom Fled

Sharon and I had been married less than a year when my wisdom teeth launched their painful war of secession. Sharon's sister Cynthia hooked us up with "the best oral surgeon in the metro area". We had little to nothing in the way of insurance. We talked with the billing office up front and agreed to pay 1/3 by check on the day of the surgery.

In the chair. "Oooh, those are bad. This will be a challenge!" Not exactly what you want to hear when someone will be excavating in your mouth, but I was in enough pain I would have let the Hatfields and McCoys in if it would have helped.

(Queue sinister music.)

I don't recall a lot after they set me up for anesthesia, but I do recall...

• Waking up with a knee on my chest, a chisel in my mouth, my head jerking with each WHACK of the little hammer. "Unhhh!!!" "He's awake! Turn it up!"
• Waking up with a knee on my chest and my head flailing back and forth while the doctor, pliers firmly on the remains of a tooth, tried to get the stubborn beast out. "Unhhh!!!" "He's awake! Turn it up!"
• Explaining groggily to an uncaring nurse that my wife was out front and would take care of payment.
• Being told I was the patient, and ordered to go pay. Still being in La La Land, who was I to argue?
• Like a cheap maze robot, finding my way to the front desk by leaning on the wall to my right and following it:
  • I would wake every so often somewhere new since my last memory (but still in the Pastel Horror Maze);
  • Occasionally I would be sagging or half way to the floor, and have to argue myself upright and moving again;
  • I remember doing a 180 where two hallways split;
  • I had a hard time following the right hand rule through the bathroom. I'm not sure whether I went around or over the toilet and around or under sink;
  • I paused at the edge of another patient room where God alone knows what was going on, and made a leap of faith that I could cross the doorway rather than enter the room;
  • Apparently I made it.
• When I finally got to the front desk (approximately three weeks later), they tried to insist I pay the entire balance. I kept (when I was conscious) insisting we didn't have that much, that we had an agreement, and that they should find my wife. Eventually someone demanded my checkbook, filled in the amount for a few dollars less than the register balance, and had me sign it. Still in La La Land, who was I to argue?
• The guy who now had no money for gas or groceries, that's who.

Needless to say, once I got over the subsequent infection, dry socket and the other miseries that followed (I was constantly either in pain or medically stoned, so it's all fuzzy) we never dealt with this Best In Area Doctor again. In fact we steered people away from him.

If my wisdom teeth had grown back, I'd have seriously considered the Hatfields and McCoys.