The surgeon's assistant was an older lady with bleached hair and a white mask "because of her cold". We'll call her the Albino. Count Rugen will be played by the nicest female dentist I've ever met in my life except for the really crappy morning she just walked us through. The nice receptionist nurse named Julie will play a nice receptionist nurse named Julie.
As we lay Jake in the dentist's chair, which certainly may as well have been a torture machine, they said "Welcome to the pit of despair." And then they cleared their throats, wiggled his tooth and added, "Don't even think about trying to escape," i.e., the tooth definitely has to go. Then they stuck him with a needle that I swear on my pretty Apple laptop was one inch square, and he screamed and cried while Count Rugen, the albino, and I held him down and tried to tell him this wasn't as torturous as it appeared.
Then Julie, who I could not in this moment cheerfully call nice anymore, ripped me out of the room as Jake's eyes rolled around in their sockets and he lost his grip on reality while I lost grip of his hand. I managed not to cry in the waiting room because of the really nice lady who told us stories and complained about how overbooked the office was that morning as we sheepishly nodded along, a teensy bit aware that our little emergency surgery probably added to the back-up.
Two minutes later (give or take) - and believe me, these were the most expensive two minutes of our lives, the tooth was out. Soon we were ushered into his recovery room. The torture here was seriously acute. "We removed his tooth," Count Rugen said. And with it we sucked one year of his life away. So tell us how you feel, Jake. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.
To which Jake cried. If you can call it crying. It was more like his vocal cords were outside of his body. They were triggered by the slightest word coming from the mouths of any of the three previously mentioned players. Any time any of them walked in the room and started speaking, the vocal cords sounded an alarm that was a low, crying moan I will never forget. His arms also seemed detached from his body and periodically rose from it in slow motion. When the arm pointed towards the door and the vocal cords said, "Truck", we knew the three were starting to reattach, and we'd be able to go home soon.
I'll get used to the gap. But let's just say the next time the three boys are alone in the bedroom, and any of the voices seem to be coming from the bunk bed, and there is anything even resembling the giggle of a friendly jumping contest, I'm tearing into that bedroom like a maniac and ripping the children apart like I'm sucking away a year of their lives.
The End.
7 comments:
I remember the anesthesiologist at Claire's Botox injections telling me it would be fine if I stayed in the room to watch. Yeah - don't EVER do that.
Recovery rooms are the worst. Luckily for me Claire usually reacts to the anesthesia by puking for a while in her groggy state. That's nice.
I'm so glad it is over for him but especially for you!
Oh Serenity! I know this was a horrible experience for you and your son but could you have made it a little less entertaining?! :-) I was tearing up with giggles at your parallel to the Princess Bride. Oh goodness...that was genius.
I gotta laugh or I'll cry, Rach. Marie Osmond said something like comedy is tragedy plus a little time. So true.
Poor thing--both of you! How horrible. When we lived in France and Sam was two, he fell on the tile steps and had to go to the dentist. We wanted to find someone who could speak English since we figured it would be traumatic enough, and the only person we could find was this Dutch woman who looked like Frankenstein and kept leaning over him and yelling, "Vy are you crying?"
I still haven't gotten over that.
Later, when Sarah had to get her wisdom teeth removed, we went to a pre-op, where they described the procedure and guess who ended up on the floor with her head between her knees, sending the nurses rushing around for ice and a cracker? Not Sarah. Me.
I'd better go now before this comment becomes a blog post of its own!
I'll be thinking of you both!
Great post ... even though it was painful to imagine at the same time! Braden had a frenulectomy in August ... he was such a little trooper, but - I'll tell ya - I needed the nitrous oxide as much (or more) than he did! So hard for a parent to watch.
Hysterical! I laughed out loud! You are the best to take such a time and make us smile, but I must warn you as a mother of a 25 yr old son, that if this is the ONLY visit that you ever experience to medical personnel where there are needles, blood, and lots of wailing and possibly stitches involved--you will be very, very, lucky :)
Serenity, your story is a glorious representation of the little terrors our kids and their parents face in everyday life! I laughed and I cried for your son and the lost tooth. Children give us such great joy, but they do take years off our lives in a blink of an eye!
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