Buggin’ out: the return

I am going to put you in my mouth, and it’s going to hurt.
By Hugh Belden
From print edition 8, 2009

Thursday, February 12 (my last day of school before March 1)

Upon awakening my mom reminded me I would be getting my wisdom teeth out. That should not have been so surprising because I scheduled the thing myself, but come on, I forgot.

That day, before 3:00 p.m., the grass was greener than it would be until much after this article was written and I stopped gagging on the blood-drenched gauze in my mouth.

My veins filled with morphine (syn- thetic heroin) and I transformed from an airplane to a submarine. I thought: is this why everyone loves real heroin so much? Hey everyone, heroin makes you poop your pants.

People are going to think I pooped my pants/did heroin. I didn’t.

I don’t remember how I got home. I have an idea. But there’s no way John Candy and my fat face would have fit in such a small bobsled with all those Jamaicans.

Overall, there was nothing extraordinarily excruciating about the removal of my wisdom teeth. Ice the cheeks today, heat them tomorrow. One vicodin every four hours. How about two every six? This story gets so much worse.

The worst feeling I felt with a swollen face and stitches in my mouth was finding out that a very pretty Italian girl, whom I had a schoolboy crush on, was without romantic representative from The United States of America on her last night here … and she thought I was cute.

Me on the phone with her: “I’m not cute anymore – my face is swollen.”

That night was completely useless anyways because I couldn’t really feel my lips. Vicodin doesn’t cure a broken heart. ; (

I rinsed my mouth with salt water so many times, playing with my wounds I thought I had discovered a salt mine. Then I spat deep, dark, blood-red spit. Well, if that wasn’t the saltiest blood I’ve ever tasted. Seven days after my operation I was exactly where I started: bleeding profusely from the gums. I would have drank that salty blood by the gallon to avoid the virus that invaded me when my symptoms were
subsiding.

I had a fever of 102 degrees, swollen glands, a sore everything, and the mindset that I was waiting at the gates of hell. My tonsils were the primary evidence of any sickness; the picture The Communicator took is too graphic to accompany my column. One tonsil was bigger than the other, and they were
almost touching.

This virus defeated my rather high tolerance for pain. With an arm broken in
two places I tackled some kids, caught some footballs, took a shower, ate dinner, wrote an essay, and tamed a beast. The effects of this virus felt as if I was breaking my arm on every swallow and
then some.

What to do? More drugs. Taking prednisone will shrink your tonsils. It may also shrink your entire head. My head was enormous before, now it’s just right. I’m kidding.

My affliction was, and still is, somewhat of a mystery. The words mono, strep, and “spleen tip” have come up in the doctor’s office. Have someone feel your spleen. See what it feels like. It’s not a good or a bad feeling — it’s a transforming one. I felt like I existed solely inside of my spleen.

I ate like five noodles in 48 hours so I lost some weight. How much, and when, is uncertain. The doctor weighed me twice (on an analog scale) at nearly fifteen pounds beneath my regular weight. The next day I weighed myself on two digital scales, one at my house and the other at my grandmother’s house. According to those scales I had gained around 10 pounds in 24 hours. That is definitely humanly impossible.

I am not downplaying the seriousness of an unknown, sweeping illness. I’m not joking when I say I was scared. Still, in a situation like mine, I would encourage you to adopt a similar point of view. It is a positive one.

My dad recently received a phone call from, Bingo, a childhood friend. His friend had a health issue. I only heard my father’s side of the conversation as he asked, “Did you call 911?” There was silence for a moment and then my dad began to laugh, hard. Bingo must have made the most morbid, hilarious joke
about his condition (if you only knew the man). Bingo’s situation is serious, far more than mine, but he will laugh until he dies and so will I because no matter how bad it is (and it will get worse) laughing will make it better.

Advertisement