The Wisdom of Teeth

The fine, faceless heroes who work at dictionary.com have defined the word wisdom in one of the following ways:

the quality or state of being wise

Traditional thought says that experience gives you wisdom. While there are some cases where it would appear someone was born with great wisdom, it is typically something you work hard to gain. Why is it then that our dental overlords insist on yanking out our wisdom teeth? It turns out, according to the purveyors of all things true on the interwebs, Wikipedia, that wisdom teeth are the source of all manner of problems and that they need to go. On this, I do not speak from experience. As it happens, I only have two wisdom teeth, instead of four, and the two that I have are lazy and have yet to emerge. If one's wisdom is connected to said vestigal third molars, you get why my 'wisdom' may be a tad questionable. However, we experienced yet another extraction bonanza today when The Boy had his four wisdom teeth removed.

Not The Boy, but he's been sporting the ice-filled maxi pad too

In a surprisingly fast procedure (all done in less than an hour, including the IV sedation and hallucinatory wake up), The Boy experienced the rite of passage that is having four teeth wrenched from the jaw. Good times. The stunningly patient and mighty fine (and dental professional) SML took him in and I joined her in the waiting room towards the end of his procedure, primarily so I could pay for it. In a further showing of my lack of wisdom, I forgot about our handy HSA debit card, but I digress. Soon enough we were called back into the recovery room where we found our heavily medicated son sitting up but strapped to a chair, looking pretty trippy. The anesthesia had done an epic number on him. He focused in on me and that's when the fun began. Here are some of the highlights:

• "Why are you here?" was his raspy demand, more than once, upon seeing me
• "There's a bear out there." as he gazed out the window of the office
• "The plants are coming in here." as he raised both arms towards the window to grab the encroaching plants. His nurse giggled and said, "Boy, he's a lightweight."
• "Where's my phone?" was asked multiple times
• Raised his hand to ask questions several times 

He was having a little trouble coming off the anesthesia and the nurse had him stay in the seat for a little while. She asked us if we had an issue changing dressings and I said, most emphatically that I did, but that SML was a dental assistant and the nurse said, 'Why am I showing you this then? You know what you're doing!' Indeed she does. Nice to have a professional at home!

Because he'd been so loopy, we had to use a wheelchair to get him down to the car. I drove him home as SML went to get him his prescribed meds. More fun ensued:

• He once again repeated his ability to mimic singers while medicated. Belinda Carlisle, she of the Go-Go's fame, was singing "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" when we got in the car and he instantly started singing along, pitch perfect and lyrically correct. When the song ended, he blurted out, "Was that Miley Cyrus?" Um, no.
• As we got closer to home, he thrust his hand at the clock and demanded to know why I was ditching work. I explained that I'm an adult and manage my own schedule and that I wasn't ditching. He immediately said, "Well, I'm 18 years old. I'm an adult. You can't tell me I can't ditch school anymore." Huh, really?
• He grabbed my work phone and started to try and use it. Um, no.
• When we got  home, I helped him into the house. After ascending the two, count them two, steps from our garage to our house, he lamented, "My legs weigh seven million billion pounds."
• Down the stairs we went to the basement as that's where he wanted to hang for the day because, and I quote, "That's the only place in our house with a decent TV." This was followed by further lamentation about how stupid it was that we had stairs. Apparently, The Boy has unspoken issues with our stairs.
• I got him settled on the couch and assumed he'd want to watch the European PGA coverage. Boy, was I wrong. "No," he said and muttered something that took me a few times to understand. "Houses. The house selling show." So HGTV it was. I didn't have the heart to tell him the house selling show wasn't on. I figured in his doped-up haze as long as it appeared to be a house, it was all good. Besides, he was having more mood swings than Sybil, so I was out and back to work.

Now, you may be wondering where are the video highlights of these shenanigans? Nope, none. That fad jumped the shark a long time ago in my book. So no need for it here. Now to see what the night brings with the patient. Good times, people, good times.