Shards of Wisdom

Earlier today I felt a strange sharp pain in my lower jaw. In the way back along the side of my tongue.

At first I thought I might have simply bitten down on something strange, but then I realized I wasn't eating anything. It's weird how your brain goes through those steps, isn't it? "Ouch. Pain. What's causing it? It must be food. What am I eating? Nothing. Hmm... Maybe it's not food, then..."

Well, after my brain had that fun little conversation with itself, I started considering where the pain was coming from and realized that it's the same area of my mouth where - after having my wisdom teeth out a few years ago - I had the same problem a few times.

**At this point, if weird anatomy stuff freaks you out, you may just want to skip the rest of this post. Maybe think about unicorns and rainbows. Sorry.**

It seems that, when a tooth is yanked from its home, it can sometimes leave behind bone shards.

About six months after my wisdom tooth was pulled, I had this same kind of pain. It was a recurring jab for about 48 hours, then it became a weird bump that I could feel in my gum. The next day I could feel something kind of sharp in that same area.

The first time this happened, I went to the dentist because it kind of freaked me out. He kind of "um-hmm-ed" and then went into my mouth with a pair of tweezers and pulled out a tiny little fleck of something. It was probably a couple of millimeters long and about half as wide. He showed it to me and said "It's a remnant of the tooth that got pulled."

A little "irrigation" later, and I was on my way home, where I popped some Ibuprofen and went on about my life. For about another three months. Then it happened again. This time I just let it work its way out.

That was probably about 5 years ago - maybe more.

Since then I've had a couple more shards come through. And I'm pretty sure that today's pain is simply the next one coming through. Kind of makes me wonder what happened to that tooth when it was getting yanked out. And how much of it is left in there.

After all... I thought I was supposed to gain wisdom with age - not keep losing it (painfully) bit by bit.