electric mist

wisdom teeth fun

Amanda mentioned Wednesday that she was going to have to go with her husband when he gets his wisdom teeth pulled, which reminded me of when I went with Luke for his. I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. If I had had a camera / DVD recorder there, I would have made a fortune on the recording.

For starters, you have to get a mental picture of Luke as a sandy-blonde kid. Who is somewhat prone to liking to be in control. All. Of. The. Time. (I cannot imagine where he got that from.) (oh, hush.)

So, it was his senior year and he had just finished wrestling in state, where they had all decided to dye their hair blue to show team spirit. Unfortunately, they didn't use anything remotely resembling proper hair coloring (and I was afraid to ask what they did use), but whatever it was, it constantly ran in rivulets down their faces. (And let me tell you, you just do not intimidate the other wrestlers when you look like a melting Smurf. I'm just saying.)

Blue hair. Which would not wash out. Luke decided that he would simply bleach it back blonde prior to going in for his wisdom teeth extraction because by this time, he was tired of looking like Skinny Smurf on Crack, and the blonde dying began. And what do blue and yellow make, boys and girls? If you answered, "Green," then you are one up on my very bright and I swear, he is in college, son.

When we arrived for the wisdom teeth extraction, I was thinking that you just could not get any sillier looking than having green hair. However, afterward, I discovered that yes, indeed, you can. Because I had completely forgotten about the drugs they would be giving him.

They gave him an IV of something to deal with the pain. I do not know what was in the shots that they put in the IV, but whatever it was, Luke apparently could still feel the pain after two entire syringes full of the stuff, so they went ahead and put in a third one. (Luke is not a huge guy. They put in enough pain killer to stop a freight train. You see where this is going.)

The surgery was over rather quickly and the nurse called me back there to sit with Luke; she expected him to be waking up quickly and to not be in any pain because of the IV. I think she thought I would be very concerned and anxious and nervous because you know, this was surgery after all. And I think I was all of those things until I walked into that room and saw him sitting in the chair.

People. His little cheeks were so swollen and puffed out with cotton gauze, he looked like squirrel who had stored all of his nuts and a few of his neighbor's in his cheeks for the winter. A green-haired squirrel. I held a straight face until the nurse left, and I waited for Luke to wake up. Which he did in just a few minutes. His head lolled around, his eyes were sort of going in separate directions (so he looked like a squirrel on crack) and then... he tried to talk. With all of that cotton in his mouth, he was so freaked out by the fact that he could see double of everything, he just had to talk. Except... well, muffled cracked up squirrel, mouth full of nuts, green hair.

The nurse stepped in and started explaining the things I would need to do when he got home and he was steadily trying to talk, trying to make consonate sounds around the gauze and over-emphasizing each one, as if more enthusiasm would help me to understand. He kept motioning to the TV, groaning out, "dooooooooo... doooo uhhhhh emmmmmm," and the nurse was busy trying to talk and then he lolled his head and looked at me and then jumped backward, startled, fear in his eyes because now there were two... of me, and he kept twisting his head, cutting his eyes sideways trying to figure out which one was real. He was reaching out for the wrong one when I just lost it, and started giggling so hard, I had to ask the nurse to give me a minute because I just couldn't listen to the instructions.

It got worse as we tried to get him to leave. Because he saw two of everything (two thresholds to step over, two curbs, two car doors) and he keep holding up two fingers, bellowing out around his cotton, "dooooooooooooooooooooooooo" and every step he took was a GIANT step, feet lifted as high as his knee to step over whatever it was he thought he saw on the floor.

In the car, he was so freaked out by the fact that there were two of everything around us, he kept wanting to take the steering wheel because he was certain we were going to crash. Which got funnier because he kept grabbing at the wrong wheel. And trying to explain, the entire time.

We somehow got behind a bus, which really confused him because apparently, the way the images overlapped, the "bus" he saw was only the solid middle part of the over-lapping images and that middle part wasn't big enough to hold a human.... so when it stopped and let some people off, his arms flailed out to the sides as if he was trying to steady his world and he somehow said (around the guaze), "Dose are weally (really) skinny people!"

I almost never got him from the car into the house by ourselves because he was high-stepping every step and landing each foot three or four feet in front, almost doing a split because he'd misjudged the distance and he wasn't entirely sure that the evil me wasn't taking him into some pit seven layers below hell. At one point, later, when he was supposed to be in bed, I found him sitting in front of the mirror in the bathroom looking so very forlorn and confused at the green locks. He kept saying, "Somedoby dib someding to my haired, momma. Somdoby dib someding to my haired."

"A forlorn, freaked-out, green-headed fat-cheeked squirrel on crack did that to you, baby."

"You led a quirrel in da hoube? You mean momma."

Yup.

Posted by toni at May 6, 2004 12:22 AM