Wisdom Teeth: The Wonders of Drilling a Hole in Your Face

PTU expert on all things snooty and opponent of hippie hikers Snoot recently brought up his co-worker's nervousness over an upcoming wisdom teeth removal. Wisdom teeth are probably the most useless part of the human body. They serve absolutely no purpose other than providing a reason for an excused couple day absence from work or school (if you're lucky) and a somewhat entertaining story or blog picture for years to come. I don't know Snooty's co-worker personally, but if he's nervous, he needs to not look at that picture up there and man up. Getting my wisdom teeth out was one of the easiest days at the dentist I ever had. The days that followed, on the other hand, weren't all fun and games.

Unlike PTU movie critic and taco enthusiast M@d $cientist's much more manly experience in wisdom teeth removal (he described it as not being bad but just a lot of "crunching" sounds which immediately makes me think of this scene) I went with the sleepy fun time gas (not an official medical term). All I can remember is closing my eyes and then opening them again to a puddle of my own drool and spouting some nonsense to the dentist's assistant. As is required by law, the dental assistant was pretty hot, so I can only imagine that whatever I let slip out of my mouth along with my saliva was probably something witty and urbane like "daaat was it?" while I looked up at her drooling over myself, looking like Tuco's Tio from Breaking Bad. After being shuttled to my parent's house I immediately proceeded to spit blood all over the tv guide as my face swelled to the size of a diseased chipmunk's. I spent the next few days alternating between replacing gauze in my mouth and choking down Campbell's Chicken noodle soup. The night of the surgery I watched the first matchup between the NBA's new Chinese giant Yao Ming and Shaquille O'Neal on ESPN and marvelled at how much blood could come out of one person's mouth.

All in all, it was a time to be remembered (even if I can't remember a thing about the surgery). Shaq won the head to head matchup, the Rockets won the game and that dental assistant is now my wife. (Not really, but it makes for a better ending to the story). Of course, most people don't have a reaction like mine and gleefully return to their jobs happy and with one or two less teeth. So don't be scared, Snoot's coworker. It should be a swift, painless surgery followed by a possible day off from work. Good luck.