A tooth of mine has been hurting me. Extreme head throbbing agony. Unable to function type pain. So, despite having spent over two grand at my dentist during the past six months, I decided to get some more dental care. Due to financial constraints, I switched from the experienced, competent Dr. Spagnuola to the cheap and bumbling dentistry students on campus.

So I went, it’s only a five minute walk from my building, I was just expecting a preliminary examination and some X-Rays to be taken. I had doubts as soon as I got inside, the medical science building really is old and falling apart. The dentistry student I was assigned to was upbeat and relaxed though. I think her name was Lisa. There was a fun moment during the medical history checklist, when she asked me about recreational drug use. The serious poker face she gave me when she said it was priceless. After she tapped all my teeth for pain (I couldn’t localize it), the hygienist/assistant (another student) was instructed to blow compressed air on my teeth. She had the nozzle turned the wrong way and instead blasted me in the eyes and nose. I survived. While Lisa chatted with her instructor, I had to endure a really painful X-Ray. All the equipment is so damn old. More modern equipment would have been more palette friendly. So, Lisa got the X-Ray back and showed me the big decayed area on my upper left wisdom tooth and after more instructor consulting, recommended pulling it. I didn’t think this was the trouble tooth but I consented since the decay was apparently massive.

They sent me over to surgery where they agreed to do it right away. I met dentistry students number two and three. Shen, an Asian guy with braces, who would be dong the actual extraction. He shook my hand and I noticed “Dentistry 2008” on his name tag. Must be a “firs’-year”, as Hagrid would say. Lucky me. Number three was supervising and was a jovial, laughing twerp who’s name I forgot but he told me the gauze was edible and I just wanted him to be serious because I’ve never had surgery before even if this was really minor. Shen agreed my wisdom tooth cavity was mammoth and did his best to anesthetize me. This was by far the worst part of the procedure. The needle on the outward face of my gums wasn’t bad at all, but the one on the inside was horrible. It had to go right at the back of my hard palette and Shen wasn’t smooth at all and I couldn’t help but twitch and my gag reflex kicked in and Shen twitched too and it was gross and horrible and took a whole minute and I hated it. The new assistant hygienist/assistant was doing a crummy job with suction too. I was gagging on what must have been blood at the back of my throat while she wondered, “Why, isn’t it sucking?” as she had the device jammed into my cheek and not the back of my fluid filled throat.

The extraction was god awful too. Shen was not good at it. It seemed like he was working really hard with the forceps or whatever it was he was using but after a few minutes he left to get the instructor. I had my eyes shut but I heard a deep commanding voice, “turn your head to the right!” and I then felt competent hands working my tooth loose with a smooth wrenching that Shen seemed incapable of. “You work it free like this, back and forth. See how it’s coming loose?” Shen took over again and it was nothing like that. More fumbling. By some miracle it finally came free and I was left sitting in the chair chewing on gauze while I listened to Shen get criticized in the Hallway. A little poetic justice for me. So yeah, that was my day at the dentist. The pain is mostly gone now. I think it might have been the wisdom tooth after all. The visit was super cheap, forty dollars or so after my student discount.