Wisdom Tooth Woes

Fresh out of MBBS and a month into your prep for your exams to enter residency training, while struggling to memorise the differences between Mallory Weiss Syndrome and Booerhaave Syndrome, if your wisdom tooth suddenly starts to erupt, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to react if you’re a newly qualified, overstressed underconfident junior doctor.

1.First of all, have unilateral headaches for an entire week. BEFORE the tooth arrives.

2.Stress out over WHY you’re getting headaches all of a sudden and make your headache worse.

3.Drink more than your weight in coffee, adrak waali chai (ginger tea) and absolutely zero water.

4. Congratulations, you now have caffeine withdrawal headache too.

5. After an entire week of this cycle on repeat, wake up on Day 8 with tenderness over your right third molar, and realise the cause of the headache.

6. On Day 9, wake up to find that you can barely open your jaw, have to have all your meals in semi-liquid consistency with a spoon(because nothing else enters that minuscule space between your upper and lower incisors) and that the right side of your jaw has started to swell.

7. Reassure parents it is nothing you can’t handle, put your MBBS degree to good use, diagnose it as just a wisdom tooth area getting inflamed, and pop an anti-inflammatory drug(CHYMORAL FORTE, for those of you who were wondering. It’s mild on your stomach and yet a miracle drug. ALWAYS WORKS)

8. Day 10. The entire right side of your face has now puffed up, causing you to resemble half a marshmallow, and now it is excruciatingly painful to even touch your face. Clearly, chymoral isn’t enough.

9. Panic internally wondering if you have an abscess, pretend to keep a calm face in front of your parents so that they continue to believe you’re a great doctor, reassure yourself that if it were an abscess you should be having fever because you are NOT immunocompromised, curse the fact that you didn’t pay more attention during your ENT posting, google for possible differential diagnosis and get a mini panic attack seeing all the possible complications if you DO have a head and neck infection.

10. At 11:30 PM, pray to the powers above that you WILL take more care of your teeth, beseech that you aren’t ready to die yet because who’s gonna take care of Mom and Dad, take CHYMORAL thrice daily and check yourself every 30 minutes for signs of Ludwig’s Angina.

11. It’s still Day 10. Technically Night 10. Toss and turn but realise you can’t fall asleep because of the pain, somehow fall asleep at midnight but wake up at 2:00 AM because you slept on your right side and now the pressure has caused radiating pain to your ear as well, decide to stay awake till 7:00 AM because you don’t want the parents to panic, hope your abscess won’t burst and kill you before that, unlock your bedroom door and keep it open just in case it does burst and they need to recover your body.

12. Get an appointment with the nearest ENT specialist, mentally sort out the tops that do fit you in case you need to get admitted for an Incision and Drainage, and go to the doctor. A fully qualified postgraduate.

13. It’s not an abscess.(HA! I TOLD YOU SO)

14. It’s just your wisdom tooth causing a lot of inflammation, with a secondary infection of your submandibular lymph nodes. Treatable.

15. Come back armed with Ibuprofen, Paracetomol and Antibiotics and fall asleep in relief.

16. Stuff yourself with cake to celebrate because you’re not going to die.