The Wisdom (Tooth) of My Father

"The whole wisdom tooth thing is a scam"

When I was eighteen years-old I went to the dentist and he told me what he was taught in dental school to tell every eighteen year-old who came to see him.

“You need to get your wisdom teeth out,” he said. And he filled out a little form for me to bring to the oral surgeon which was a paper diagram of the inside of my mouth, with four red circles around the upper and lower wisdom teeth. I left the office, went home, and was calling the oral surgeon to make the appointment when my father gave me the single best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten.

“Hang up the phone,” he said. “Don’t do it. The whole wisdom tooth thing is a scam. They just love getting you all gassed up and then going at you with the pliers. My advice is, toss that paper out and forget all about it.”

“But he’s a dentist,” I said. “A trained medical professional. Don’t you think I should listen to him?”

My unimpressed father shrugged. “Go ahead and have them yank those teeth out of your head if you want,” he said. “But it’s going to be painful and bloody and you’re going to be miserable for a few weeks at least. My advice is, don’t do it.”

He looked at my skeptical expression and instantly read my thoughts.

“And it isn’t about the expense, okay? Unlike your ridiculous highway robbery college tuition, getting your wisdom teeth out is covered by my insurance.”

He told me that when he was eighteen, a dentist had told him the very same thing. And he ignored it completely. If his wisdom teeth started to hurt, he told himself, then he’d have them extracted. But as long as they were just sitting there in his head, tucked away and keeping quiet, he saw no reason to dig them out. That was, he told me, thirty years ago. So far, so good.

“But go ahead, if it makes you feel better. Just don’t come crying to me when you have to spend two weeks eating Jell-O.”

I stood with the phone in my hand, paralyzed.

“Good morning, Dr. Kendall’s office,” came the sound from the receiver. “Hello? Hello?”

I hung up the phone and forgot all about it. I would follow my father’s advice and let sleeping wisdom teeth lie. The year was 1984, and the only thing I regret is that I didn’t follow more of my father’s advice. He had a lot of wisdom along with his wisdom teeth. He knew that people cause a lot of pain for themselves when they try to fix things that aren’t broken.

Three weeks ago, and many years later, I had finally to admit that my upper right wisdom tooth needed to go. It had been on its very best behavior for nearly forty years, but had lately been achy and inflamed. My dentist didn’t even bother to make a case. He simply pointed to the oddly-colored blob on my X-ray and said, “It’s only going to get worse.”

So on Tuesday of last week I had my upper right wisdom tooth — and only my upper right wisdom tooth — removed. The other three remain snugly packed into my jaw, untroubled and peaceful. But still, I felt a little bit like a failure. My father died a few years ago and I miss him terribly. He was a hero to me, and sitting in the oral surgeon’s chair I felt ashamed of myself, and my tooth, because I wasn’t able to live up to his example of ignoring medical advice he found inconvenient and unnecessary.

Though to be fair, in the ensuing decades the procedure has become a lot less invasive and much easier to endure. My oral surgeon even offered a special technique to accelerate healing. The nurse took a small blood sample before the procedure, and while the surgeon was extracting the tooth (which took barely fifteen minutes) the blood sample was put into a centrifuge that separated out platelets and collagen and combined them both into a sticky gel-like liquid that was applied to the wound before it was stitched up. It’s supposed to make the recovery process much faster.

It was also an extra $1700, and not covered by insurance, which I didn’t realize until I staggered out of the office with a mouth full of bloody gauze. Maybe it was a side-effect of the painkillers, but I’m pretty sure I heard my father, somewhere, chuckling and saying, “Told you it was a scam,” which in a way made the entire ordeal worth it.