So I had my wisdom teeth out

And it’s horrible. Right now my lower lip is completely numb and my face is completely lopsided — grotesquely swollen on the right and almost normal on the left — so that I look like half a hamster. It’s a scary sight: in a way it’s worse than looking like, well, a whole hamster. At least I know what half of me would look like if I moved to Albuquerque and ate KFC for a year.

I totally hate my dentist for persuading me that I had to subject myself to this misery. Ten grand for the op excluding hospital fees and who knows how much of that will be picked up by the medical aid. Two admissions to hospital in five months after years of being dutifully healthy and not making claims: Discovery must really love me. I really thought I would get away with not having to get it done but apparently there was no escaping it. Having your wisdom teeth out seems to be a rite of passage for most adults, and everyone has to put up with the chipmunk cheeks, painkillers and antibiotics afterwards.

Apparently, my case was not an easy one. The maxillofacial surgeon — who had a King Daavid accent and made a cynical remark about marriage when I told him I needed to not look like a complete freak at my sister’s wedding at the end of the month and therefore needed to get this done sooner rather than later — told me rather reproachfully that my teeth were impacted and therefore it was going to be difficult to get them out. “The other patient before you, I could just flick them out. You’re much more difficult. But that’s not your problem, that’s my problem,” he told me as I lay there in my green gown and awful blue plastic undies under the lights in the operating theatre — real hospitals are always so much less glamorous than Grey’s Anatomy.

I felt as though I should apologise for not being considerate enough to possess molars that were easy to rip out. There was a brief moment of misunderstanding between us when I acknowledged that my lips were as dry as the Kalahari and he thought I was talking about calamari — but then the anaesthetist started pumping the most awful burning substance into my left hand and I passed out. When I woke up later I was gripped by a sense of utter despair and started sobbing. The nurse told me that this is a common reaction to the anaesthetic, which was a relief, since sobbing in a state of utter despair is something I do on a regular basis anyway, and it’s nice to have an excuse other than the ongoing existential crisis for once.

The info sheet they sent me home with warned about possible permanent nerve damage. I was also informed that the swelling would be worst on the third day and I was not to blow my nose for a week (something I’ve already done several times without thinking). For two days I was officially a mouth breather (such a pity I couldn’t find a cousin to marry and a trailer to live in). They didn’t say anything about the swelling extending down one’s neck into the shoulder, and one’s skin making a funny noise when you press it, but presumably that’s all normal too. I hope that bit about the permanent nerve damage doesn’t apply to me. You have no idea how difficult it is to apply lip-gloss neatly when half of your mouth is paralysed.

Of course, the important thing is that I am now wisdom-teeth free and no longer need to worry about them. I’ve often wondered why we have these things, since, like the appendix, they appear to serve no adaptive purpose and only cause trouble. The theory is that our ancestors did a lot more chewing of plant food and needed every molar they could get. As we shifted to a diet that included meat and cooked food, our brains became larger and jaws smaller, and the wisdom teeth effectively became vestigial, pushed out of the way and ignored until they started to erupt. (So there you have it: the braai effectively made us smarter. Boerewors, despite a multitude of evidence to the contrary, is brain food.)

A month ago, I had no idea I’d be walking around with four empty sockets in my jaw and having to reconcile myself with bearing a distressing resemblance to a large rodent. So I’m gritting my teeth, grinning and bearing it, etc etc, even though those things are completely metaphorical, since right now, of course, I’m incapable of doing either.