Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

02 Jul 2005, 8:36 a.m.

Weekend Upgrade

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Lips: no longer numb. Pudding and mashed potatoes: still delicious! I feel a general disinclination to get up from bed but can successfully putter around the house.

My thanks to Zack for driving Leonard and me home from the oral surgeon's in awful traffic yesterday afternoon. I was grumpier than he deserved. Tip for anyone who has to groggily leave a downtown doctor's office in a car at 5:15 on the Friday before Fourth of July Weekend: have your driver stationed in a nearby parking garage BEFORE you have to leave.

As I found out from the kindly Dr. David Ehsan, as well as the other dentist and oral surgeon I saw during this process, it's better to have wisdom teeth removed (unless they've already come in without causing a fuss) around age 18, before the jaw's fully formed and the wisdom teeth have put down long roots. I feel guilty that I didn't have them out earlier; years ago a dentist made a passing remark that it's better to have wisdom teeth out sooner rather than later. But that's all! From what he said, I figured that wisdom teeth that aren't causing an immediate problem can stick around, like the appendix. He didn't explain that they're almost inevitably problematic, or the financial and medical reasons why it's better for a student on her parents' insurance to get it done some teenage summer, or make any persuasive or expository effort at all. Dentists: don't make this mistake!