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My molar teeth have the pleasant habit to slowly die on me once they have had a filling. After they have died they become infected. Not very nice. This time one of my wisdom teeth had taken its turn to pass away. So it had to go. I only would have to go to the dentist to have it pulled out, right? Simple as that. Well, not really. I, of course, had to be a special case.

It turned out that the nerve in my jaw was running very close to the root ending of my wisdom tooth. If, during pulling, the tooth would break, the dentist would be forced to drill out the remains of the root. That would increase the chance of nerve damage. If the nerve would be damaged, I would end up with a permanent anaesthetic of my jaw and my tongue. Thab woulb be nob sow hamby :-)

The solution would be to get the tooth pulled by an oral surgeon. Even though the oral surgeon would be a lot more expensive (at least NZ$700, more than any medical insurance will cover here), the chance of having my jaw nerve damaged was not a very nice prospect, so I decided to get it done by an oral surgeon regardless of the cost.

Called the surgeon’s office. No appointment possible until the first of March. Not good. I already was taking antibiotics to get the infection under control, but having to continue this for a full month didn’t look very appealing or wise. Even more so because the infection did hurt a lot, and kept on doing so, even with the antibiotics.

When I called my dentist last Friday for the third round of antibiotics he had had enough. He called some mates of him to speed things up. It turned out that one of his mates was an Indian dentist of about 40 years old. He had been a full-blown oral surgeon in India; however, his education and work experience there weren’t recognized here in NZ (which is REALLY stupid. The NZ government is shouting all over the place that they have a shortage of skilled workers. Once the skilled workers arrive in NZ they have to re-do their complete education…). He had just finished his NZ dentist education, so now he was working as a dentist, but with all his surgeon experience. Therefore this guy was perfectly capable to remove my wisdom tooth without any problem. He could see me on Monday already.

I have never met such a nice, funny and yet very skilled person. He removed the wisdom tooth without any cutting (in Holland a Dutch oral surgeon already had removed my other wisdom tooth, and the procedure turned into a bloodbath because the tooth was so brittle and had to be cut out. Better tooth this time, or a better surgeon??). In 10 minutes the whole procedure was over and done with… for NZ$250 instead of $700. Finally I don’t have to stick to liquid food anymore!

And here it is: