Excised From Mouth Region

I used to have four wisdom teeth (as do most people) and two broken teeth long since impacted. I no longer have these, because this morning they were forcefully removed, ripped from my mouth, snapped and wrenched out of my skull, by a professional dental surgeon who I paid to do it for me.

Luckily I didn't feel a thing because I was knocked out with a general anaesthetic by the pleasant anaesthetist (she was a fellow Kiwi) and afterwards there was no pain because the nerves of the teeth were removed along with them, and there was no residual damage to my facial nerves that run along my jaw (near where the wisdom teeth sit). Therefore my dental surgeon clearly is a very talented and experienced man, and did an excellent job.

My friend Rob did a huge favour for me and drove me home, but with a detour to his place to supervise my immediate aftermath of the general anaesthetic and help me get my mind off the discomfort and numbness from the local anaesthetic. He had plenty of experience with hospitals himself, and his anecdotes very much reassured me that what I was going through was normal on the upper side of fortunate.

Most of the fees will be covered by my health insurance, which is great - I rarely use my insurance, as I can afford most of my rare medical procedures already anyway, and tend to think of them as a necessary part of life I should deal with my way, rather than get someone else to pay for it like a cop-out of responsibility. But as I'm paying for the insurance, then surely I should use it for big expenses like this.

Right now I'm all swollen, which is quite an uncomfortable feeling and makes me look like I have "superhero lantern jaw syndrome"; ice packs help with that. I also have to take a goodly amount of antibiotics to prevent infection, plus I have some extra strength painkillers which I hopefully will not require.

The swelling should go down in a day or so, but it does make eating challenging, so I'm not sure if I should venture out and find some suitable easily swallowable foodstuffs, or just muddle on through with what I already bought in anticipation.

So I'm a little indisposed, but not too messed up.