Thursday
Someone from the oral surgeon’s office calls at 8:30 to confirm my appointment and make sure I’m not planning on eating or drinking anything before the surgery at 2:30 (I’m not). While I’m on the phone, I ask her about the triazolam (aka Halcion) tablet I’ve been instructed to take an hour before my appointment.

ME: And what’s that for?
HER: It’ll keep you from being anxious before the procedure.
ME: What if I’m not anxious?
HER: It’ll just make you a little dopey.
ME: What if being dopey is the only thing I’m anxious about?
HER: You’re going to be dopey after, you know.
ME: But I don’t really need to be dopey before, right?
HER: Well, some people take it, and you can’t even tell.

And there’s my out. If they can’t tell if I’ve taken it, they won’t be able to tell if I haven’t taken it. I decide to take half, but by 1:30 I’m feeling so loopy from not having eaten that I figure I don’t even need that.

Later, just before the procedure, the surgeon’s assistant asks me if I took the little blue pill before I came in. I tell her the truth. She frowns a bit, but then notices the heart monitor I am hooked up to.

Apparently it’s hard to scold someone for not taking a pill to help her relax when she’s sitting in the chair two minutes before surgery with a heart rate of 62. Instead, she says, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

ME: Sure.
HER: Is that your natural hair color?
ME: Oh, no. Natural has nothing to do with it.
HER: Really? What do you use?

I am explaining my recipe when the oral surgeon comes in, and while he puts in the anesthetic drip he tells me that immediately after the extraction the tissue separating the hole from the sinus cavity will be the "thickness and texture of a corn flake," as in thin and brittle, and I shouldn’t blow my nose for two weeks.

Thirty minutes of general anesthesia and fifteen minutes of recovery later, the assistant gives me my two formerly impacted wisdom teeth, nestled in gauze but whole.

I feel well enough afterward to go with my mother and E to the drug store for the antibiotics I’d been prescribed, and then to the video store. I had gauze in my mouth the whole time, and when I got home the bleeding on the left had stopped entirely, and on the right it stopped after another ten minutes with fresh gauze.

I only blow my nose once that night, hollering, "Shit shit shit!" when I realize what I’m doing. I don't feel air coming out of the hole, though, and no liquid comes out of my nose when I drink, so apparently the corn flake is still intact.

Friday
I eat poached eggs and soup and ice cream and watch the first season of The Osbournes on DVD with my mom. Some of the ice cream is lavender flavor. Most of it is chocolate.

There’s no more bleeding, and very little swelling. At one point I’m sure I’ve torn out a stitch on the left, because I feel what I take to be a bit of loose flesh. It will turn out to be some of the thread from the stitches.

I’m very smug about how easy this wisdom teeth business has turned out to be. I’ve only taken a few of the twenty hydrocodone (aka Vicodin) I was prescribed, and have been getting by with ibuprofen.

Again, I blow my nose only once. This time - possibly under the influence of The Osbournes - I yell, "Fuck!" My mother threatens to hang notes all over the apartment that say, "Don’t blow your nose!! Love, Mom."

Saturday
I wake up at 6:30 a.m. paranoid, sure the wound on the left is infected, because it aches and is much more swollen than the right side, which is itself considerably more swollen than it was yesterday. I’m also feeling feverish and logy. I gather up all the paperwork from the oral surgeon’s office, trying to determine whether this is normal.

I was feeling muy macho up to this point, but the very idea of infection makes me want to spend the day in bed whimpering. I am like the aliens in The War of Worlds - I leave a trail of destruction, oblivious to all attempts to thwart me, but a cold will take me down.

Around 4:00 p.m. I find the bit of paper that assures me all of my symptoms are normal.

I catch myself halfway through blowing my nose. Progress!

Sunday
I’m feeling better, but I can’t stop thinking about that corn flake.

My mom leaves for California, and leaves behind a note in the bathroom that says, "Don’t blow your nose!! Love, Mom."

This is the first day that I don't even try to blow my nose.

Monday
Another stitch must have come out, because the loose bit of thread is at least an inch long now. It’s like a damn cat toy in there.

Tuesday
The thread broke off. I kinda miss it.