Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2005 July 2 (entry 0)

# 02 Jul 2005, 08:36AM: Weekend Upgrade: Lips: no longer numb. Pudding and mashed potatoes: still delicious! I feel a general disinclination to get up from bed but can successfully putter around the house.

My thanks to Zack for driving Leonard and me home from the oral surgeon's in awful traffic yesterday afternoon. I was grumpier than he deserved. Tip for anyone who has to groggily leave a downtown doctor's office in a car at 5:15 on the Friday before Fourth of July Weekend: have your driver stationed in a nearby parking garage BEFORE you have to leave.

As I found out from the kindly Dr. David Ehsan, as well as the other dentist and oral surgeon I saw during this process, it's better to have wisdom teeth removed (unless they've already come in without causing a fuss) around age 18, before the jaw's fully formed and the wisdom teeth have put down long roots. I feel guilty that I didn't have them out earlier; years ago a dentist made a passing remark that it's better to have wisdom teeth out sooner rather than later. But that's all! From what he said, I figured that wisdom teeth that aren't causing an immediate problem can stick around, like the appendix. He didn't explain that they're almost inevitably problematic, or the financial and medical reasons why it's better for a student on her parents' insurance to get it done some teenage summer, or make any persuasive or expository effort at all. Dentists: don't make this mistake!

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