Everyone has a bucket list don’t they? It stands to reason therefore that there is such a thing as an anti-bucket list, ie things you don’t really ever want to experience in this humble life. Just like your bucket list can be extraordinarily long, so can your anti-bucket list – I would hazard more so. So, I thought it would be fun (or anti-fun) to concoct a top 10 list of things I don’t ever want to happen in this life.
I should probably start with a little context – you see, at the weekend I experienced the rather odd and thoroughly unpleasant extraction of a tooth. Don’t get me wrong, my dentist is great, very calming and she explains everything so that even my brain cell can comprehend. The procedure itself was entirely painless courtesy of the six injections I had to the nerves leading to my molar root. What you don’t prepare for is the yanking and manipulating that occurs along with the macabre snapping of pieces of the once proud and undamaged adult tooth. Over the years, crap brushing and eating/drinking the wrong stuff gradually took its toll on this tooth to the point that eventually root canal procedures (3 in all) reduced it to a stub with a crown sat on top. For the past 2 years an infection has gradually set in and was steadily worsening to the point it was starting to damage the bone itself – not good. It’s been fun popping the bubble on my gum whenever it gets full of gunk, but my dentist explained that it really was time to get rid or suffer untold pain from abscesses and worse. Uhm, okay then. Killjoy!
So, numbed up I am invited back into the chair of doom to lose an adult tooth – that is quite sobering to be honest. You ain’t getting any more new teeth, that’s it, gone, unless of course you have the misfortune of active wisdom teeth – thankfully I don’t! So much drilling occurs as she whittles the remains of the molar away in preparation for pulling each part out one by one. At one stage a piece snapped, pinged out of my mouth and smacked against her visor! I had a strange urge to laugh there and then, but felt that could be quite detrimental to my oral health being as I had a drill being held in there. Not sure how I didn’t!
So, an hour in the chair later, I am minus one tooth and under strict instruction not to rinse or spit over the next 24 hours. Apart from fishing out two fairly large chips of tooth from my numbed mouth (quite some doing that took I can tell you!), everything seemed fine. The socket had clotted nicely she said, which I took as a good thing and the whole thing would have healed in around 10-12 weeks. Holy molars! Anyway, 2 days on and I’ve not experienced any bleeds, just the occasional jabbing throb that a dose of Paracetamol soon fixes.
So, my anti-bucket list. You know, I’ve gotten to the end of writing about my extraction regaling and I actually don’t want to consider stuff that I don’t want to happen. Amazing how a seemingly cool idea becomes one of shuddering avoidance in the space of 3 paragraphs.
Look after those Penelopes people, you only get one set!
