Of missing wisdom tooth and dental floss

My jaw hurts.

I finally had the last of my wisdom tooth removed yesterday evening and it still hurts. It is not a sharp pain, but a throbbing, numbing dull pain. It’s like a thorn in the flesh, the kind that is not debilitating but still irritates loads.

It took two injections of local anesthesia and ten minutes of tugging and pulling to remove it. Ten long minutes…. Ten minutes of white knuckles gripping the armrest and averting my eyes before the tooth was extracted. Ten minutes of desperate thoughts and prayers. Of remembering the difficulties experienced in extraction of the previous three wisdom teeth. “Strong roots,” the dentist had said, “Your tooth is anchored firmly in your jaw.” He continued to tug away, from one angle to another. I could feel the tooth inched out excruciating bit by bit.

“Why did I agree to take out the tooth?” I thought, “After all there’s no cavity, it could wait.” It’s was on the dentist advice that I decided to take the last wisdom tooth out. With the lower wisdom tooth removed, my tooth had no use; and with the difficulty in cleaning the backmost tooth, it was slowly turning grimy and dirty. In time with gradual accumulation of bacteria, a cavity will form and infection will set in. Ignore it long enough and it will lead to a full-blown cavity and increased pain. The rot might even set into the surrounding molars. The choice was presented to me, either bear with the pain now and remove it or faced even worse pain and greater infection if I continued to ignore it. The decision was made and my jaw now hurts.

I thought this was much like the inner life. You can ignore some area of your inner life – making time and space for God, setting time aside for rest, or making priority for significant relationships, and life will appear fine for a while. Then the cracks accumulate, a rot will form and things fall apart. Better we bear the lesser pain of discomfort if we deal with it now, then wait till the deep-seated infection to set in. Better that we act with discipline now then continue to ignore it and face deeper hurts and pain later.

The dentist after ten minutes of tugging managed to remove my wisdom tooth. He gave me pain-killers and anti-biotics which I gratefully took. On leaving, he said, “remember maintain oral hygiene and diligently floss your teeth!”

Ollie

Jan 2007