Words of Wisdom

Yesterday 'Computer Boy' had all four of his impacted wisdom teeth removed. Something I've been dreading since the day his hygienist pointed out to me on an x-ray back in November. Why should it bother ME so greatly that HE should need his wisdom teeth extracted? Because I feared the experience might be equally as horrific for him as it was for me. Let's just say that I'd happily go through the pain of child birth two, three even four more times before I'd EVER subject myself to the pain of wisdom tooth extraction. Being the good mom that I am though, I spoke not a word of my experience to my son, so as not to frighten him. However, just as we pulled up to the oral surgeons office yesterday my son turned to me and asked, "How was it for you when you had your wisdom teeth removed." I didn't want to lie to him so I simply said, "Well, at least we know from your history of anesthesia with the lung surgery that you don't get violently ill from it and all you need to know about my experience is I DO."

So we went into the office and waited.....
As we waited I could tell my son was doing his best to fight off nervousness but you know, it didn't help matters when a woman leaving the office stopped and looked at my son and with a mouth full of gauze mumbled, "DON'T DO IT!" and then laughed. Yeah, that REALLY helped.

Eventually we were asked to come back. I was taken to a room to watch a video detailing how to care for the patient who has had the wisdom teeth extracted and my son was off to get high on laughing gas and anesthesia. The procedure took longer than I thought, roughly 45 min. (when my daughter had her 4 first molars removed it only took about 15 min.) and I was asked to come back to the room where my son was all looped out in the dental chair. As the nurse began going over instructions for me my son reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a pen and began waving it around. I looked at him and said, "Hey bud, what're you doing with the pen?... You want me to take the pen?" He shook his head back and forth with a look of frustration. So I said, "Here bud, I'll take the pen for you." He again shook his head and began grunting in a Frankenstein fashion. Then he removed the cap from the pen and I said, "No bud, what are you doing, put the cap back on the pen." To which he shook his head and grunted again. Both the nurse and I stood there sort of laughing at how goofy he was acting and then got really concerned when my son started writing on his hand. I thought, oh man this kid is really gone! I was trying to explain that he should give me the pen when I realized that what he'd written was:

WANT PAPER

He was trying to communicate with us but with all that gauze in his mouth it was impossible. Once he realized he was too loopy to even form a question he gave up on writing anything more on his hands. I carefully led him out of the office and to the car and once he was seated I handed him the folder from the doctors office to write on. What was the first thing he wrote?

Zak's train of thought has left the station.

Gee, thanks bud... Like I couldn't have figured that one out. He wrote a few other notes which I tried to carefully decipher as I drove home. I realized after we were half-way home that he didn't even have his seat belt on, which meant even I wasn't thinking clearly.

After we got home and set up on the couch in the family room, in front of the t.v. I finally understood why he had set up his computer and monitor on the coffee table. Before I could even get water poured for him he had the screen up and was typing questions and requests from his keyboard. Gotta hand it to the kid, he was really thinking ahead, knowing it would be difficult to communicate.

So here we are the day after... It's after 11 am and he's still asleep and that kind of makes it seem like any other day except for the fact that I'm not the least bit agitated about it. He seems to have weathered this experience without any trouble and that makes me more relieved than I can say.