"that's the first movement I've gotten out of that tooth in the past 15 minutes"

I know I have been lagging on updates, and there is still the rest of my Vietnam trip to talk about, but for the time being, here's something pretty current, a Peace Corps update.

While I was in Vietnam, Peace Corps sent a response to me medical package. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it already, but it seem that I needed to take out my wisdom teeth. All four of them.
I don't know if there is anyone out there who enjoys going to the dentist, but I am definitely not one of them. It's nothing personal, but really, who enjoys laying helplessly with their mouth wide open while another person is probing and drilling around inside it. The worse part for me, I think, is that even though I can't see what's going on, I can hear everything, and no matter how much I try to distract myself from the intense drilling sound, my mind always returns to it along with all these crazy images.

And my jaws are always so sore afterward. Who likes that?

But I have to do it, so I scheduled an appointment at an office in the valley at the recommendation of yelp. My appointment was this past Monday. Everyone has been telling me about how surprisingly quick and easy it was going to be, and just stick with soft food and I'll be fine, so I was expecting some 45 minutes max ordeal coming. Well, I went into the room at around 3:30pm and didn't come out until 6:30pm.

It turned out that all of my teeth were difficult, each in their own way. At first the dentist told me that he was gonna try and get the easier one out first, then the hard one last, and I felt pretty optimistic hearing that. But after about 30 minutes of continuous grilling sound and taking another extra shot of Novocaine on top of the 4 I already had, the first tooth didn't feel like it was an easy one. That was the one that was laying sideway and had to be broken in pieces in order to get it out.

why yes, that is an x-ray of my face

After about 45 minutes, I started to hope that he used some kind of reserve psychology and lied to me and that the first teeth was actually the most difficult one. Turned out that my wish came true, after what felt like an eternity, he said he was lying, and that the rest should be easy.

Then he jinxed himself. The second tooth had relatively little problem coming out, but the third one apparently was "so intimately connected" to the tooth next to it, that I think he might have pulled a muscle trying to pry it out of my mouth. The handle of the drill left a bruise on my lip because he had to press on it to get leverage to pull out my tooth.

By the last tooth, the dentist was so beat that he offered to wait another 6 months for it to grow out some more before taking it out, but since I was already numb and bleeding massively, I wanted him to just go for it. Which was pretty much another 45 minutes and another shot of Novocaine. This one was barely leaving the bone, so he had to dig way deeper up and probably cut out a good amount of flesh from my gum.

could as well be pass off as torture devices

Speaking of blood and gore, thought I was completely numb from the eyeballs down, I could pretty much felt all action being done to me, i.e: scalpel cutting/carving out my gum to get to my teeth because none of them actually surfaced, and saw what used to be a white suctioning tube tainted blood red.

My favorite part was seeing one of my tooth taken out with a huge chunk of bloody flesh wrapped around it.

I bet my dentist went straight for the bar after my surgery, and I would have too had I not have four bloody holes in every corner of my mouth.

after all the bloody flesh were cleaned off

I was given anti-biotics to avoid a sinus infection because my upper teeth were so close to my sinuses still. I also got vicodins, which completely knocked me out every time even though I would only take half a tablet at a time. It is now day 4 after the gore-fest, and I have stopped bleeding though there are still swelling and there is a massive sore inside my cheek, probably a side effect from the massive mouth invasion. I didn't swell up like a chipmunk, but I think my lips got really big...ger than they already are. Random? And every time I try to touch my teeth, the swollen flesh inside my mouth would rub against each other in a rubbery gross way.

The bright side is, I sent out all my stuff to PC now, so hopefully I can still make my program next month. I. really. want. to. leave. already.