A story of my first Kuwait wisdom tooth extraction
"Baining Madam?" He asks for what must be the seventh time, bloodied drill in one hand, dental pick in the other. He heaves over me, out of breath, dropping sweat beads onto the inside of the scarlet spattered acrylic face shield that separates our two bio-hazardous fluids.
"You have bain?" He asks again. Hells yes, I have freakin' PAIN! You’re dismantling my skull one tooth fragment at a time!
"Uh-huh." I answer, without moving my tongue. I taste pennies and calcium; the warm, gritty, iron flavor of flesh and bone.
"Iza, okay?" He gestures with the drill. "I zink I almost zere." Well have at it, there man, no need to hold back now. I close my eyes as the drill starts. I smell burning, there's more splattering, more gauze, and the drill is exchanged for chisels and picks. Cracking, breaking sounds, pulling, yanking, pulling, prying. The dentist sits down with a harrumph.
"Iza stuck." He sounds defeated.
It's been hours. I'm tired. The muscles of my neck and back and even my glutius maximus ache from pulling back against the pulling on my jaw, the effort to free a wisdom tooth from its tight socket. The Novocain started to wear off about 15 minutes ago and I steady my breath into 5-count inhales and exhales. I think about the possibility of ancient peoples giving birth and having their teeth removed without painkillers and decide that generations of medical advancements have made us all soft. I will survive this. It’s just a tooth. All I have to do is wait, it will be over –sometime. Breathe.
He's back, leaning over me, peering into my mouth, bushy eyebrows fierce. The light is adjusted, tools are exchanged – he has a plan. I close my eyes. Inhale-2-3-4-5. Exhale-2-3-4-5. Drill. Water. Drill. Inhale-2-3-4-5. Exhale-2-3-4-5. Water. Suction. Searing, wincing pain.
"Baining Madam?" A pause in action.
"Uh-huh!" I look for his eyes to communicate my extreme contempt for him at this moment.
"You need more Novocain?" I can't tell if he's annoyed at the interruption or relieved for the break.
"Uh-huh. Yagh." Screw reviving my forefather’s toughness in a single dental visit; find a section of gum that's still intact and stab me with more of that sweet numb-juice.
"Okay, I zink you need oral surgeon." He says after 2 hours and 45 minutes of sadistic torture. "We take you for more x-ray now, I zink zere is one bieces still inside. Ze oral surgeon will cut it out for you."
"Uh-gkay." Why argue, really?
While we wait for the x-rays to be inspected and the additional shots of Novocain to take effect, let me fill in some details from the beginning of the story. After the extensive dental work of my teen years I was left with only the two bottom wisdom teeth. Previous dentists had warned that the day would come when they would have to be pulled, but no need to rush it they said, when they hurt, go to the dentist. Easy enough. Those two teeth began to hurt. My co-worker recommended a dentist, I made an appointment and on a Wednesday evening, right after work, I went to see Dr. Bain… er, make that Hussein or something. He looked in my mouth, asked which one hurt the most and announced that we would start there. It will take only 45 minutes or so, he estimated, to remove both.
For this procedure in the States, if you want them to, they'll knock you clean out; you wake up with ice-packs, a prescription for Vicodin and you're on your way to enjoying chocolate milkshakes, movies in bed, and a few days off of work, oh yeah, and a little swelling. In
As a side note: prior to making this appointment, I had just heard a story, a friend of a friend, who went to the ER at an international clinic in
With this story still fresh in my mind, I apprehensively eyed Dr. Hussein's framed university credentials and tried to recall the "What to do if You're Having a Heart Attack" instructions that I saw in a chain email once. Something about raising your left arm while hitting your chest and forceful coughing… Or maybe you raise your left arm and then hit your chest with it…? It didn’t seem like valuable information at the time.
Back to the dentist chair now; I've been moved to the oral surgeon's room where I wait with a mouthful of gauze. I'm remember a snippet of the TV show Scrubs when the actor Zach Braff tries to entertain an old cranky patient by stuffing cotton balls in his mouth and imitating an Italian mobster's accent and I wonder why it's never as funny when I do it. Maybe it's because I'm a nasal-voiced, white girl with awkward comedic timing, but really, you'd think that would only make it funnier. Huh, another mystery.
With the call to prayer sounding faintly from the street, my savior surgeon enters the room. She stands about my height with my butt in the chair and her feet in comfortable cross-trainers. She's covered in white fabric from head to toe; white hijab, white doctoral coat, white butcher's apron, white linen pants and white gloves. One normal sized eye looks at me with all the compassion of Mother Theresa and the other blinked from behind a telescopic magnifying lens. The monochromatic layering gave her the appearance of a dense feather pillow, add the head apparatus with rotatable, interchangeable lneses and visions of anthropomorphic mole-nuns come to mind.
"Shhh... Habibti, shhh..." She whispers from behind the dental mask as the chair is reclined to its lowest setting, my head now lower than my knees. "You're very strong," she says. It sounds like she means it. One hand rests on my forehead or gently squeezes my shoulder during exchanges of dental instruments; that constant contact a gesture of reassurance.
"Alright, Habibti, we're almost there." I believe her. When the masked face leans close I can hear her muffled Arabic, reciting the evening maghrib prayers. I pretend that she is praying just for me. I makes me feel better. She completed the ordeal with eight stitches.
"Okay, that one's finished." She leans back and clicks one of the lenses up, it perches outside of her line of sight.
"Would you like me to get the other one while you're here? Or maybe you'd like to go home now?"
"Yahg. Ohm," I try to sound as casually desperate as I can manage.
And so concludes the tale of my first wisdom tooth extraction in Kuwait. The saga continues with part two, later, after I get a chocolate freakin' milkshake.
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