Seven weeks later, I finally had my appointment with Dr. Lee (My lovely jaw surgeon) to begin removing the wires–the splint will still be in for another week to gauge my bite and jaw alignment. This is familiar: Dr. Lee peering around in my mouth with some metal object. Familiarity is funny though, because sometimes the familiar still lingers in our subconscious somewhere and in turn, isn’t familiar to us at all. Well, my subconscious likes to smile in pain.
While he was removing the wires from the bottom-left side of my mouth (The part of the jaw that was rather difficult and stubborn during surgery), I cringed in a smile. Dr. Lee quickly apologized and loosened his grip on the wire and said, “Millie, you are very strange, you know. Most people respond to pain by screaming or something. You smiled. It’s okay to show pain.”
Wait a minute, this isn’t my therapist and he surely isn’t a psychologist. What’s going on here?
Pain is funny too. (I obviously need a thesaurus because funny cannot be my go-to adjective and it obviously does not describe familiarity nor pain!) Pain is discomfort, suffering, the bad stuff. If we’re not in discomfort, if we are not suffering, by our own standards and feelings, is that still pain?
My bottom lip and chin are still numb because some of the nerves were moved during the procedure and they have to reposition themselves to function again. Anyway, that’s beside the point–since being unwired, I’ve been unintentionally biting my lower lip and sometimes my brackets will get caught on my lip. I can’t feel it, but I can see it.
We’ve all heard of those rare cases where people can’t feel physical pain and they are a hazard to themselves for obvious reasons. This is similar, in a much smaller scale, of course. My lip is seeing some damage, but if I can’t feel it, does it matter?
