I need to write about this because it’s been on my mind a lot lately. It’s about my wisdom teeth and their continued presence in my head.

I first found out that my two bottom wisdom teeth were growing in sideways and would have to be removed when I was seventeen, and for the seven years since then I’ve been (1) putting off having it done and (2) worrying about it.

I actually made and kept a preliminary appointment with an oral surgeon last year, but that was around the same time that Larry I was causing trouble, so I dealt with him first. But that surgeon’s office was done all in matchy browns and oranges with fancy chairs, like someone’s living room. Even the exam rooms were painted a soothing, sumptuous brown. The staff all wore identical burnt-orange scrubs. Would YOU want to undergo minor surgery in someone’s living room? I thought not. Garish hospital white, practical furniture, and bears-and-hippos scrubs for me, please.

Plus the surgeon was too jokey, and his hands were cold and stumpy. Needless to say, I didn’t call those interior decorators medical professionals back, even after I’d recovered from my surgery.

Now I’m staring at a huge block of nearly-unscheduled, uncommitted time, probably the last such block for quite a while. The younger you have your elective oral surgeries, the better, or so I’ve heard, so this summer is the ideal time to suck it up and get them yanked. And yet I worry.

I don’t worry about the procedure too much, strangely enough. I’m actually fairly unperturbed by most dental procedures, especially given my intense fears of flying, death, big spiders, freak heart attacks, etc. A few weeks ago I went in to have two old fillings drilled out and redone, and it didn’t bother me a bit. It was uncomfortable, yes, but I was never anxious. Even the big old numbing needles dentists use don’t bother me, despite my only recently having learned not to go into hysterics at IV sticks.

I worry instead about my anxiety. I worry that the three months of dizziness and nausea I felt after Larry II’s removal, having been shown by extensive testing not to have been caused by any physical thing the doctors can think of, were purely the result of anxiety about the surgery.

I worry that severe, prolonged anxiety has now become a conditioned response in me to any non-trivial medical procedure, and that in the days leading up to the surgery I will become anxious beyond my control, and that it will make me physically ill.

I worry that the physical symptoms of my anxiety will complicate the surgery, and I worry that if something does go wrong, those symptoms will mask the real problem.

I worry that since my recovery from the second Larryectomy was so much worse than my recovery from the first, my recovery from this surgery will be proportionately worse than that one.

I worry that stressing out now about the anxiety I will feel in the days and hours immediately leading up to the surgery will make me sick from now until then and will ruin my summer. I worry that if this does make me sick, my anxiety will compound itself exponentially.

Essentially, I worry that I’ll worry about worrying about worrying about the surgery, which is clearly a ridiculous tower of self-torture. Sometimes I wish someone would walk up behind me tomorrow, bop me on the head, and yank those teeth out so I wouldn’t have to fret over it any more. But then of course I worry that if that (or something slightly more realistic) actually happened, I would freak out about the loss of control in my life and be worried every day from then on that it would happen again. Blargh.

I don’t have any profound conclusions to draw from this, except that it’s obviously silly, but I feel it very deeply and don’t know how to pull myself out. I just wanted to vent for a bit, to see it all on the page. I’ve been nauseated off and on for the last week or so, and I wondered tonight whether it might be my anxiety about my anxiety, etc. about my wisdom teeth that might have brought it on. I don’t know. But I worry.

Tomorrow I’ll find an oral surgeon near my parents’ house and make an appointment. Thinking about that makes me want to throw up. Puppies and kittens! Rainbows and fairies! Chocolate ice cream! Ah, that’s better.

Tags: anxiety, brain pills, Larry the Lump, surgery, wisdom teeth

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