Going Under the Knife

Tomorrow at 8:30 a.m., I'm getting my wisdom teeth out. And I'm really not looking forward to it, because I don't like the following:

• needles
• pain
• getting up early

I've needed to get my wisdom teeth out for a while now, but never had the dental coverage for it. UBC claims to have medical and dental for their students (they make you pay for medical and dental at any rate), but it pretty much doesn't actually cover anything. But now that I have a big girl job, with actual benefits and suchlike, I can do such things as have parts of my body taken out, for the low, low price of $500¹.

I'm going to be knocked out by IV sedation - I talked about it extensively with the surgeon at the consultation but, of course, don't quite remember all the drugs included in the cocktail² - I think it was some combo of benzos and opioids. I'll have to remember to ask him again tomorrow. Apparently this will cause me to sleep through the whole procedure³, but is nowhere near as risky as general anesthetic (i.e., unlike a general, the risk of dying from sedation is pretty much nil)⁴. And when I get out of surgery, I'll feel like I'm drunk. Thankfully, Rachel is coming with me to make sure I actually make it home in my altered state - she has experience in this realm, so I'm confident that I'll be fine.

On the way home from work I figure I'll stop at work for frozen fruit (for smoothies) and ice packs. Anything else you recommend?

¹My insurance doesn't pay the specialists fees which, apparently, aren't cheap.
²because I did ask him for all the details.
³Why does "procedure" sounds worse than "surgery" to me?
⁴*knocks on wood*

Note: That pic is not me, but that's pretty much what my bottom wisdom teeth look like. The pic was stolen from the interwebs, but not really stolen 'cuz it's under a Creative Commons license that says I may "copy, distribute, display, and perform the work"... and look ma, I'm even linking to the license.