Couch 235: Home State Advantage

About wisdom teeth: the concept of being under complete anesthesia to get your wisdom teeth out is rather unheard of here. I'm sure it exists, but I've talked to way more people from the states that get them out that way than over here, regardless of whether the teeth show already.

I had a pretty bad experience with getting one of them out (the first one). It was so grown into my bone that they had to cut it into pieces, but since that means cutting straight through the nerve and the local anesthetics don't work that well there (even if they inject it directly into the nerve, it's transported away almost immediately), I was in a lot of pain. They tried to give me laughing gas, but nobody told me that it can kind of make you high, I had never even been drunk at that point in my life and suddenly started perceiving the world differently, which freaked me out. So, they had to do parts with me in pain. The doctor even had to call her boss to help pull the pieces in the end, the tooth was that stuck...

The three after that were also removed under local anesthesia only.


Yet, I'm not scared of dentists. I have had various braces for 6 or 7 years, I'm used to weird stuff going on in my mouth, including pain. It definitely made me scared of anesthesia though, since it seemed to wear off faster than they expected for me, and in different circumstances that sounds kind of uncomfortable...

Yeah, I think that's when they refer to an oral surgeon here in the US. Maybe oral surgery is an uncommon specialty in your country or something. Or perhaps dental school prepares dentists to do this sort of thing.

One of my sockets had to be opened up again and debrided because it was causing me pain. Surgeon said there was a higher than normal amount of inflammation. No general anesthesia for that, but it was fine. I was scared going in at the idea of him opening up the stitches and scraping tissue out because that sounds pretty awful.

I think I tend to fall asleep with laughing gas. Or maybe it has an amnesia effect. They really blast the laughing gas here in my experience. I remember the dentist saying to turn it up because I was still alert last time I had a filling. I'm always far too out of it to perceive anything other than intense sleepiness.

So I decided to start learning ASL because my sister and nieces are deafer than me and are learning.

This language is going to kick my *** down the street and back, six ways from Sunday.

Give me quantitative metathesis and the locative case any day.

From what I've heard about it, ASL isn't structured in the same way that English is, like nouns and verbs might be in a different order if you're trying to represent the same idea. And it doesn't use articles and maybe some other parts of speech. Does that seem like an accurate understanding from what you know so far? It all makes it seem like it would be difficult to adapt to. (I mean, I had difficulty learning Spanish, so).

Yes, that's right. Partly because it's a mix of French sign language and local American sign languages from places like Martha's Vineyard, and partly because a primarily visual language doesn't need some of the features a spoken language does.

The grammar and nuance is mostly conveyed by facial expression. But the neatest thing so far is that ASL ends questions with the question word--which I just think is a stroke of genius.

I found an original phone charger in my drawers! :

You charge your phone in your pants?

I think you had to be born in stl in order to understand Imo's pizza - weird cheese on a saltine like crust - and the natives go bonkers over it. I know I never came to grips with it when I have gone there. Toasted ravioli on the other hand - yum. And then I tried Detroit pizza - what are they thinking - just a bunch of bread? I just want to say stop to every state or city to stop messing up pizza.

It's like when people from Philly want you to put canned "cheez" on a cheese steak. Why do that to perfectly good food?

Well now im conflicted. Matthew Stafford beat Tom Brady.

omg, to the bolded part!! ahhh!!! I am pretty sure the laughing gas just helped me pass out as well. I would have loved it if it was an option for fillings. **shudders**