Wisdom or the lack of it..

I was driving towards my dentist's office today morning and it sent me down the memory lane of the various visits I have made till date.

I remember when I was a small girl, I had gone with my dad to a very friendly dentist close to my home. He had extracted my tooth after giving local anaesthesia and my mouth was swollen like a football. While prescribing the medicine, he asked me gently "Beta goli chahiye ki sharbat"(Do you want capsule or tonic?). To give you some clarity, I hate medicines of any form especially tonic. Incidently, "sharbat" in hindi also means juice. And in my innocent mind, I took it as juice and imagined various Rasna flavors making my mouth water. I immediately said "Sharbat". I don't remember how I gulped the tonic down my mouth. Either my mom must have performed some trick or I must have just refused to drink it. In any case, I was fine in couple of days . (Just a thought: If I refused to drink the tonic and I got fine, do we really need medicine? But with mom around, is it possible? )

The next visit to dentist was when I had excruciating pain because of a wisdom tooth trying to come out. The dentist had recommended the removal of wisdom tooth. Incidently, it was a few days before my wedding. Maybe it was God's way to making me wiser or maybe not :)

After coming to US, I had more "regular cleaning" dentist visits. In all these visits, the hygenist invariably pointed out how bad my teeth were. Somehow I found in hard to believe a I do not have any tooth problem except wisdom tooth . But I have that concern in general life too- wisdom. Anyways, that's a different story. She even went to an extent saying, I should have teeth cleaned every 2 months even if I need to shell out money from my pocket. After all, flashing off a beautiful smile is important. Fortunately for me, even if my wisdom tooth gave up on me , my wisdom helped and I stopped heeding to any of her advice.

I had another wisdom tooth attack . My second wisdom tooth suddenly thought it needs to see the light of the day and started piercing through my jaws. Never made to the surface but gave a jolt to all it's neighbors. The dentist argued, why not remove all the remaining 3 wisdom teeth. That would relieve me of any pain (and wisdom ?) . He also mentioned the face won't swell as the medicines used are different. A myriad of thoughts went across my mind - my last swollen face, sleepless nights , icecreams ( in India, you were allowed to eat lots of icecream when tooth was extracted and I used to love that part). Since my chain of thoughts ended in icecream bringing a smile to my face, I said yes without listening to what the dentist was saying. So an appointment was made to remove all my three wisdom teeth.

I came to the office on the appointed date. It was in the morning so that H could go to work. All my wisdom teeth were extracted and I seemed to be doing pretty fine. H dropped me home and went to work. Then, I started feeling pain. Maybe the anaesthasia was wearning off now. I felt tired too. Thought I would eat and then sleep. Now, the hell broke loose. I threw up what ever I ate including medicine, started having head ache along with tooth ache. Wait a minute, wasn't the extraction done to relieve me of pain? My face got swollen and I could barely open my lips, let alone eat or talk. I was all alone in the home. H would call me and I would barely murmur and he could not understand what I am saying. I can still remember how the whole day went by. I appreciated simple facts of life as eating and talking. For the next couple of days to H's delight, I was the one who did less talk and more listen. My family would pull my leg at every opportunity to check if I had any "wisdom" left. Unanimously, they agreed it went away with my teeth.

For the first time today, the hygenist acknowldged the fact that my teeth were looking good and I must be taking extra care now. To be very honest, I have done nothing special to my teeth except brushing. But what she said definitely put me in a good spirit.

Wisdom or no wisdom, I have a reason to smile :)