posted by WDavid at 7/14/2006 08:48:00 PM
Extraction
By W. David MacKenzie
July 14, 2006
The chair was tilted back at exactly the wrong angle for comfort but that seemed fitting since the chair was located in a dentist’s surgical suite and I was about to have my wisdom teeth extracted. To be fair, I was only having two of them removed since my questionable genetic heritage didn’t include a full set of four. Nevertheless, when you’ve managed to get through forty-four years on this earth without a single surgical procedure, the relatively simple act of removing two useless molars is enough to make you worry. I worried—a lot.
As soon as I sat down in the green leather chair my first thought was that I should get back up again and run for the nearest exit but the nurse…surgical assistant…orderly…whatever he was, was one step ahead of me. He handed me a tiny paper cup.
“Take a mouthful of this and swirl it around in your mouth for twenty seconds then spit it out.”
That did it—I wasn’t going anywhere. That little cup might as well have been a seat belt strapping me to the chair. Now I had a task to do; I had ticking seconds to count in my mind and tingly antiseptic mouthwash to swish between my teeth and over my gums. Fifty thousand years of human evolution had primed me with a lifesaving fight-or-flight instinct and it had all been derailed by a Dixie cup of blue mouthwash.
As I spit the frothy liquid back into the paper cup the—oh, let’s just call him the nurse—the nurse started checking the equipment at the back of the room. I was taking in the cityscape view through the expansive windows while behind me the nurse fiddled with things that clanked and dinged in metal trays or beeped and buzzed at the push of a button. I was wondering what interesting little sound he would make next when the jarring roar of an industrial strength buzz-saw drained the color from my face.
Time to leave! Time to run!
I shot a glance left then right…no tables, no flat surface to set down the cup so I could get the hell out of there. In a moment of blind panic, I rushed the cup to my lips, gulped down the used mouthwash, and crushed the empty paper cup in my fist.
The antiseptic fluid burned and scratched and fizzed as it went down my throat. I coughed and gagged and wheezed trying to force it back up. The buzz-saw sound stopped and the nurse hurried to my side.
“You’re supposed to spit it out,” he said, prying the crumpled cup from my clenched fist. My eyes were watering, and breathing was still an iffy proposition, but I could tell he’d sized me up as the dumbest thing since Project Monorail. Luckily he mistook my bright red face for asphyxiation instead of unparalleled embarrassment. He produced a plastic bag that I held to my mouth while I retched up most of the noxious liquid, and all the while he patted my back in a “good thing I’m here to save your stupid butt” kind of way.
After that, the rest of the extraction process was all down hill. They injected me with anesthetic, put a gas mask over my nose, and I floated off to la-la land. I don’t have any memories of anything else until I woke up in my own bed three hours later, but my father says I kept mumbling about poison mouthwash and the monorail all the way home.
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WDavid,
Ruth,
WDavid,
PeggySueO,
Fred MacKenzie,
Friday, July 14, 2006
Extraction
5 Comments:
I just wrote this piece tonight for a class assignment. In class we were instructed to write a letter to a friend about an event that really happened and then one about a fictional event. Our homework was to choose one of the letters and polish it up into a story. I wrote both letters about my recent wisdom tooth extraction. One was the real story about an easy extraction. The second was about an extraction gone horribly wrong. My homework piece is a little bit from both, but in the end it's a lighthearted look at something most people are really scared about. I welcome all critiques and comments.
By
WDavid, at 7/14/2006 08:56:00 PM
Well, I think you said this was mostly the "gone wrong" made up version and I hope that's true as I'd hate to think you really choked on the mouthwash!
As for the "story", I think it would have read alright as a letter as it started out, but as a story it lacks something in the ending. I kind of had the "Is that all there is?" feeling. I guess I'm just used to your mystery/suspence/thriller type of story and this just seemed kind of tepid.
By
Ruth, at 7/15/2006 03:42:00 AM
Ruth...(BTW, I'm going to use first names instead of Mom and Bro and Sis in hopes that others will start to join and will not be as aware of who "Mom" might be)...That's a fair assessment of the story. It's not an action thriller, for sure. It's more of a look at one man's fears, how circumstances accentuate those fears, and how he eventually has his fears proven wrong.
In my "it's all gone wrong" letter the anesthetic didn't work and he had to endure all of the tugs and twists and grinding the dentist had to do to get the teeth out. In that one his fears were justified. It might have made for a more gripping story but I thought that was a bad message to send. This piece, being, I hope, upbeat and a little humorous, might find it's way into a health newsletter or humor magazine. I’ll have to look at Writer’s Market and see what I can find. There’s bound to be some little newsletter somewhere in need of filler. :-)
By
WDavid, at 7/15/2006 06:45:00 AM
I can easily see this as a letter to a friend. If you had posted the "gone wrong" story, I probably would have never gone to the dentist again!!
By
PeggySueO, at 7/15/2006 08:53:00 PM
Since you say this is a mix of both stories I have to ask, did you really swallow the mouthwash?
By
Fred MacKenzie, at 7/19/2006 04:38:00 PM
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