Just over two weeks now since one of my wisdom teeth was extracted. There's no pain now, so apparently I avoided the dreaded "dry socket". There was aching for a few days, but that seemed to be as the molars on that jaw adjusted to the absence of the lateral pressure. I can now clean those teeth without breaking numerous pieces of floss. So after much apprehension and procrastination (I've been told for years I should have all the wisdom teeth out and instead I delayed until I was thirty-five, after which age dentists only extract teeth which are actually bothering the patient, as this one was) it was a fairly easy procedure. Except for the sound of my tooth cracking, several times, as the oral surgeon manipulated some device or other.

Afterwards he asked me if I wanted to see the tooth. No freakin' way. He had told the assistant that my tooth curiously had three roots instead of two. I don't need to see my mutant, shattered tooth.

There's nothing like a hole in one's gum to poke at. And Vicodin. Though that was, in my pharmaceutical experience, the most blissful of drugged hazes. Instead it just renders one insensate and comatose. What's the point of pain pills if you can't be awake to appreciate the lack of pain?