After putting off the whole ordeal for more than a year, my husband finally agreed to have his wisdom teeth out. Yes, he was supposed to have had them out in 2009, but he let it slide until they started to hurt again. Men.
So today was the big day. I left work early and took him to the oral surgeon's office where he was to be anesthetized for the extraction. I'd brought my laptop and some research to read so I could work on a project, but it turned out that the whole thing took less than 20 minutes.
When the nurse came out and pointed me to the recovery room, I discovered a very confused man. As I posted to Facebook, "Sitting with husband as he recovers from having his wisdom teeth out. He's like 'David After Dentist' crossed with Marlon Brando in The Godfather."
He kept saying, "I don't remember anything." Well, that was the point of the general anesthesia, now wasn't it?
Talking to him was a lot like talking to a person with Alzheimer's. He wasn't quite sure where he was and he kept asking me the same questions over and over.
I led him carefully out to the car and drove him home so he could nap while I picked up the prescriptions they'd given him. While I was at the store, I stocked up on soft foods: pudding, vanilla yogurt, soup, applesauce and some sugar-free juice for him to drink.
The whole "change the gauze every 20-30 minutes" thing fell by the wayside immediately because once he fell asleep, he was out for several hours. When he finally woke up, I was hoping to get some food into him, but his face and tongue were still numb even three-and-a-half hours after the procedure.
He's up and around now (watching a video podcast about recording, to be exact), but I still feel like I need to be around and baby him a bit, at least until he eats. In the meantime, I guess I'll get back to work.
Image Credit: Natalie Dee
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