Warning! This entry is not for the squeamish!

Heading into the Christmas season in 2002, gum tissue covering one of my teeth acquired a tear (which is a delicate way of saying it ripped -- ouch!) and necessitated some speedy oral surgery called a "gingiva graft". I told the gory story here on this website, and it is currently one of the most searched for sections of my public journal.

It had occurred to me as we left behind this most recent Christmas season that I ought to give an update. Interestingly enough, a visitor to the site dropped me a line at the same time asking how things have been going.

Well, funny you should ask.

I had my wisdom teeth pulled out in April this past year, and once again the procedure was effortless but the recovery was a drag. In fact, I was fine for the first day or two after the event, but then the pain level started to creep up. At the same time, I was settling into a relatively new job, and had to travel quite a bit as a result. There's nothing quite so fun as hopping the globe while recovering from oral surgery and having that slow taste of cloves (used as an anesthetic) to make all of your food taste weird.

But that, too, passed, and life went on. Then, a month ago or so, I had my biannual (did I say biannual? I meant semi-annual! Silly me... Freudian slide, I guess) dentist check-up, and my dentist said: "What the hell? Don't you floss?"

Well, no, not really.

All by way of saying, I need to floss more or my dentist will disown me (after taking all of my money and, he says, some more of my teeth). OK, that's probably more information than you really wanted to know. But despite all that... the area that had been the site of my gum graft is actually looking pretty good. It's been two years now, and it's clearly in better shape than it had been in before the tear.

But there's more to this story on a couple of different levels.

One is how the passage of time lends perspective on things. A reader stumbled upon my site and described a very similar chain of events with regard to how well their gingiva graft(s) have been going. Which is to say, they haven't been flawless, which is why another procedure is on the horizon. As my reader knows... I feel your pain.

But the reader went on to ask (in reference to some other issues I mentioned in my string of essays about the gingiva graft): "I also feel my smile is weird and different since that little thing that attaches your lip to your gum has been sliced. I can't even see it! I feel like my lip is kind of hanging freely and falls forward a bit? 'Is this normal?' I sure hope so."

Reader, nothing is normal about any of this, and you will NEVER BE THE SAME! BWAHAHAHAAAA! Your intimates may or may not notice the change in your smile -- my guess is that they won't -- because even if there is a change, it's probably very subtle. But what *will* happen is, you'll get used to how it feels. Just like you get used to how it feels when you have a tooth extracted, or braces put on or removed, or you gain or lose weight, or you get earrings, or your foot is amputated by a passing subway train, or whatever.

I'm having to reconcile myself with the sad fact that with every passing year, I look a little bit less like the guy I looked like in college. And let's make no mistake: I didn't appreciate it then, but I wasn't such a bad looking guy in college. Of course, I appreciate it now because now I'm 80 pounds heavier, my hair is *darker* (I liked being a blond, durnit!), I'm fatter, I weigh more, I have widow's peaks, and I'm much larger than I used to be. In fact, I'd have to say that if the gum graft altered my smile at all, it was nowhere near as much as my weight gain has altered my smile. :-X

So, dear reader, if you want to stop feeling self-conscious about how the gum surgery has affected your smile, do what I did: gain an average of five pounds every year.

Fortunately, ice cream is both good for your surgery recovery *and* for pursuing that weight gain.

There's another aspect of the oral surgery I wanted to mention here, with regard to what it means down the line. Two years or so have passed since the graft(s), and over half a year has passed since I had my wisdom teeth forcibly removed. I've settled into my new mouth, though, and my mouth is probably about as healthy as any typical American male my age.

But therein lies the rub. As a good friend of mine once commented (he is ten years older than me): it's all down hill from here. In a bad way. Sure, it's oral surgery today, but next year, it's getting new glasses. Or arthritis. Or mid-life crisis (more on that in a future essay). Or menopause (for half of my readers, anyway). Cancer. The flu. Knee replacement surgery. Empty Nest Syndrome. Senility. Flatulence. Halitosis. Ennui. Rigor mortis.

It's been two years since I had the procedure(s), and you've caught me in a philosophical mood: it wasn't a walk in the park, but then, walks in parks are overrated. Everything has worked out okay as far as my mouth is concerned... much to the chagrin of my waist.