When I was diagnosed to have teeth and not just tooth extraction, it was like receiving a death sentence. I had gone for physical and at my appointment, I had told my doctor that I was having tooth ache. She referred me to the dental clinic. At the dental appointment, the female dentist examined my teeth and told me that one of my wisdom teeth did not grow well and that it had affected the tooth beside it. She said the only option was extraction of both teeth. Worse still, she was not competent enough to do such a complicated extraction.

The extraction was a complicated one because the wisdom tooth had fully grown and now sitting on a nerve in my jaw. She said that I would have to make an appointment with the University of Minnesota Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon to have both extracted. I told her that I didn’t want any of my teeth extracted and asked if there was no other option than losing two teeth at the same time. Her response was not favorable. She prescribed some antibiotics and analgesic, sending me home to go decided on what I wanted to do.

This was about a year ago. I took my medicines and the pain subsided. I was praying hard to get healed. I kept telling myself, “I don’t want to lose my teeth.” I told some friends and a friend opened her mouth to show me how her gum is now looking like that of a baby yet to teeth after a tooth had been extracted. Then she added, “I am fine now and happy. I don’t care there is no tooth there because I don’t feel pain anymore.” Rather than convincing me, my fear grew worse. In fact, I can still see her “baby-like” gum as I write this piece.

In November of last year I returned to the dentist office. This time, I had a male dentist attended to me. He repeated the same diagnosis I had. In fact, before the doctor came in, the nurse who checked me in was surprised that I still had the teeth in my mouth after her examination. An x-tray had been taken, then, the doctor explained what was in the x-tray. He said, he couldn’t extract the teeth too. I had to go to a surgeon to get it out because, “The wisdom tooth is sitting on a nerve.” The he continued by aggravating my fear by saying, “If I try to do it, you could lose all your teeth and your lips.” Pointing to something that looked like a white line on the black and white picture, he said, “This nerve controls your teeth and lips, taking the wisdom teeth out improperly can damage your whole teeth and lips, so you need to see a surgeon who specializes in taking out such complicated tooth.”

At that point, I knew my faith was nowhere to be found. It was not little. It was lost. At that point too, I was already suffering from such a bath breath that I inconvenient people around me. So, he ordered a teeth cleaning session with the hygienist. I made an appointment and went in for my teeth cleaning.

Continue with the story soon in part two entitled, The Teeth Cleaning, Chopping, sharpening tools, scary experience.

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