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Warning: Medical story ahead.

A week ago Wednesday I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed. My dentists had been encouraging me to do it for a few years, and I finally decided to bite the bullet and get it done (as the first in a series of dental things I need to deal with). The actual procedure was pretty easy, with the typical-but-still-amazing anasthesia experience:

Doctor: You’re going to be asleep in about ten seconds.

Me: Really? (Thinking: It must have been 5 seconds already, and I don’t even feel sleepy…)

And then somebody pressed the skip-forward button and I was getting ready to go home. I felt pretty clear headed, but Hannah tells me I asked the same questions many times and kept repeating “That went really well”, so it was probably good she was driving.

Recovery was not as bad as I expected at first, but has taken longer then I expected (advice for under-21 readers: get those babies pulled early, while you’re still a fast healer). Around day five my lower right tooth cavity was still hurting, and had a downright nasty taste and smell. It was diagnosed as the dreaded dry socket, which dentists treat with the seemingly old-fashioned remedy of covering the bottom of the socket with clove oil.

This wouldn’t have been so bad, except that in the middle of dealing with the dry socket I had to take a work-related trip to California. I was nervous to be away from my oral surgeon with this unpleasant and painful hole in my jaw, and after I arrived, as I stood in line for my rental car, I realized that I was in trouble: my tooth (or rather, not-tooth) was hurting worse then ever. So I decided to throw myself at the mercy of a local oral surgeon’s office. I called 411, picked a random number from the list they gave, and called Dr. Scott Baird in Palo Alto.

And this is where I get to the reason I’m bothering to blog this: Dr Baird and his staff were absolutely great. They let me come in three times during my three-day visit, took care of my dry socket, and gave me a better explanation of what was going on than my own oral surgeon had. They even let me take the cool x-ray showing the big tooth-shaped holes in my head. They did this even though I wasn’t their regular patient and in all likelyhood would never be back. And amazingly, they didn’t charge me a thing. It was awesome.

So if you’re in Silicon Valley and need some oral surgery, I can’t recommend Dr. Baird and his staff enough. Getting your wisdom teeth out isn’t fun, but my experience is that these guys will go out of their way to help you through it.