Kate's Point of View

About a year ago I noticed that my gums by two teeth were sort of wearing away. I asked the dentist and he said I needed a transplant. Well, I stalled on this because my boyfriend said they get the transplant tissue from dead pigs. And I didn’t want to be part pig.

So at my last dentist appointment they said I really needed to get on it before the root was totally exposed. Whatever.

So I had my transplant on Wednesday. They asked me if I wanted donor tissue, which it turns out is from a DEAD PERSON. No thank you I said. I told them how my boyfriend had said they get tissue from dead pigs. Wrongo. They get DONOR TEETH from dead pigs. That is so much nastier than tissue.

I opted for them to take tissue from the roof of my mouth. They numbed me up (supposedly) with several shots. But I felt the whole thing. I was wincing and tearing up and they just kept saying, “Well, this is quite unusual.” Thanks a f*cking lot. Good to know my pain is unusual. Does that help me? No.

So then they exposed and cleaned two of my roots and then sewed in some roof-of-my-mouth-tissue. For the next ten days I get no food on the left side of my mouth and I can only brush the teeth on the right side of my mouth. My face is swollen so it looks like I do chew. I am on antibiotics and percodan. The only bonus to all of this is how cheap the drugs were: $4 and $3.08. I don’t understand it but it’s fine with me.

Face swollen? Check.
Mouth sore? Check.
Low grade temperature? Check.
Chills and sweats? Check.

That’s right. My mouth is infected. And if that’s not nasty enough, I can feel the threads hanging out of my gums, holding the transplanted tissue into place. This is gross.

Oh, and where they took the donor tissue out of the roof of my mouth? Well, they closed the gaping hole with purple super glue. It fell out today. So now there is just a hole. Eeeew. I showed my boyfriend and do you know what he said? “It looks a lot better. Yesterday it looked beefy.” Beefy?

This is the most f*cking nasty experience I have been through.

Ah yes. The infected mouth I have? Well not to make matters even more attractive, the antibiotics I am on, which I have been on before for other things, are giving me a rash! Apparently I have developed some allergy to the medicine. Dear god.

I am not against censorship. In fact, I am very much against it. There are many groups out there trying to stop us from seeing certain content on TV, movies, etc. While there are messages I would prefer didn’t hit the airways (messages very different from the ones typically being censored), I think that people should be able to spout their stupidity. It’s their right.

What I find terribly amusing are the efforts of the Parent Television Council. They work to “ensure that children are not constantly assaulted by sex, violence and profanity on television and in other media.” As part of their very diligent efforts to make sure your kids don’t see smut, they post streamed media of the smuttiest stuff from the past week on their web site as an example of the smut that is out on TV.

Wait.

They post it on their web site? Where any kid can see it? Awesome! I gotta go…