Wisdom comes with pain as we have all heard people say, but ironically and sadly, it goes with pain too. I am referring to the painful process of uprooting one’s wisdom teeth. I wish I could say tooth, but in my case, again sadly, it is the case of the plurals. And, and not just one more than the singular, but three times more. Yes, we speak of four.

I remember having written about the whole wisdom tooth removal business sometime in 2004 if I am not mistaken. I don’t have the patience now to look for it in the archives. One of these wisdom four had started troubling me so much during that time that I forced myself to the dentist, whereupon she advised me to remove all four including the troublesome one, to avoid them being cause of trouble later. Thankfully, she mentioned doing this in a phased manner, that is, removing only the troublesome one immediately, and one by one the rest. As suggested, I got the problem one removed then.

What happened after that is perhaps natural. I forgot all about the dentist’s advice. My memory is pretty good on every other point, as most people who know me will very unhappily testify to am sure. But, in this one point, ignorance seemed the best road to bliss. My teeth unfortunately didn’t seem to be on the same page. Result being, few weeks ago, I again started feeling some slight pain.

Cutting the long story short, I took myself to the dentist last Saturday. Somehow, from the previous visit I remembered her prescribing some medicines for a week before fixing an appointment. I don’t exactly know what got into her this time or if my memory had again tried to play with me, she gave me an appointment for the following Monday itself. I blabbered if Wednesday may not be a better day but not having a good enough answer other than umm…and humm…when asked ‘why’, I decided to ‘go for it’. This time she was adamant about removing at least two. Both apparently were in equally bad shape. I decided to get the lower one removed first and maybe the following week the upper one (note the use of ‘maybe’).

Well, alls well that ends. It’s not technically ended but still. Monday didn’t come quickly enough and when it came, wouldn’t go quickly enough. The specialist who was called for the dirty job didn’t seem to like the look of my lower tooth at all. Seemed it would be somewhat complicated and my face may swell for two days and ….! I could only manage to splutter and incoherently utter about the upper one. She looked at it—and to tell you her exact words—she said “I can knock off both now”. Knock them off? (choice of words suited to ease the heart indeed!) You could have knocked ME off at that moment. She seemed to think it would be better to get done with the whole thing at the same time, but try convincing me! I suddenly remembered the important meeting at office on Wednesday morning and couldn’t imagine how it could be concluded without my noble presence, if as the doc said my face may swell for two whole days. And as for me going to office or anywhere out-of-doors with a swollen face? The question didn’t even beg an answer. I could feel myself flinch when I told the doc to get rid of the upper one for now. I couldn’t help ask if she could be sure this wouldn’t be as complicated as the lower one, and she said “may be, but I can’t really say for sure”. If that didn’t beat it!

Anyway, the ordeal was easily over, thank God, and I was much better when it was finally done.

I wish it was finally, finally done though and I didn’t have to again go this Friday to take care of the so called complicated lower one. Now that I think about it, maybe I should have followed the doc’s advice and be done with it. Maybe I should have let ‘wisdom’ prevail even as it was on its way out :(