Today I finally started feeling some soreness in my jaw, of the “low throbbing sensation” variety. More ibuprofen, ice packs.

I also noticed that the left corner of my mouth was scabbing over, left over from when the dentist was stretching my mouth open to use the various implements of tooth pullery. This reminds me, at one point during the extraction he actually said, “Hand me the pliers”. I thought it was odd that he’d use that term in front of a patient, because it doesn’t bring up pleasant thoughts. Dr Matthew had a Southeast Asian / Indian appearance, so perhaps he wasn’t trained here in the States. His dental assistant must have been surprised too, because the following dialog ensued:

    "What did you ask for?"
    "The pliers."
    "Ah. A lot of dentists call it the 'East-West' (?)"
    "Oh. That's interesting.'"

I’m sure they discussed doctor-to-doctor codespeak when I left :-) Another thought that came to me was that DDSs must have tremendous arm strength to do what they do, and they probably would be pretty good at foosball.