‘Ow Oo I Ook?’

‘Ud oo et ee a ear-or?”

“What?” I said, completely mystified by this first attempt at communication from my teenage daughter, who just had her wisdom teeth removed and was still clenching gauze pads in her jaws and balancing ice packs on her cheeks.

“Ud oo et ee a EAR-or?” she repeated. It sounded exactly the same to me except there was more emphasis on that last word, whatever it was.

“I’ll get you a pad and pencil,” I said.

“Ear-or” turned out to be mirror and, of course, she wanted to check for signs of chipmunk cheeks, one of the worst possible complications of wisdom-tooth extraction. Oddly, the problem was not even listed in the “Known Risks and Complications” section of “A Patient’s Guide to Wisdom Teeth” handed out by her oral surgeon, who practices in Orange. Instead, it expounded on concerns such as infection, dry sockets, sinus complications and root fragments.

The cheeks were only slightly puffy, but her inspection revealed a more pressing problem.

“Ma ips! Ma ips!” she said, in rising panic.

Calmly, I handed her the pad and pencil.

Ah. Her lips. They were kind of swollen.

“Don’t worry, dear. They look just like Kim Basinger’s. Women pay plastic surgeons to get that bee-stung look,” I reassured.

It didn’t work. In no time, she had me on the phone to the oral surgeon’s office, inquiring if swollen lips were normal or could they possibly have severed a nerve and disfigured her for life.

Quite normal, the answer came. Something about a retractor, which I took to be one of those big pieces of dental equipment they manage to jam in your mouth against all odds.

My daughter kept the mirror by her side so she could examine her lips every five minutes for signs of deflation or possible lip explosion. Swollen lips were not among her fears months ago when we found out her wisdom teeth were impacted, or, blocked from coming into the mouth normally. Pain, gross bleeding, missed social events--those were her fears. From the parental prospective, thousands of dollars in orthodontia were in jeopardy.

Long ago and in another galaxy, when I was about her age, I had my wisdom teeth removed. I don’t remember much about it, except that the guy who took them out looked exactly like Vince Edwards in “Ben Casey,” a medical TV show popular in the 1960s. I couldn’t use this as a bonding experience with my daughter, though, because the show hasn’t made it to Nick at Nite.

They gave me a sleeping pill, which I thought was cool. I took the pill, promptly threw up and went to sleep without chemical assistance.

That’s all I remember. I don’t remember anything about not disturbing the blood clot, rinsing with salt water four times a day or living on tricolor pasta with Parmesan cheese for three days. I didn’t have an answer for how long the bleeding would go on. I didn’t remember bleeding.

That’s because they really put you out back then, the staff at Dr. Robert Fontanesi’s office told me. In a pre-surgery visit, his office gave us two tiny pills that are supposed to relax the patient before surgery. In our case, the patient was so relaxed that she doesn’t remember walking into the office. She does remember the IV, a mixture of drugs including a tranquilizer, a painkiller and an anti-inflammatory. Everything else is a blank.

The surgery involved making incisions in the gum tissue over each tooth, using a chisel technique to remove bone over the teeth and using small instruments to persuade the teeth out. In 35 minutes, it was over. She didn’t need stitches; the cheeks hold the tissue together, the staff explained.

Groggily, she walked to the car, and we went home to begin the recovery process.

She slept some. I puttered around downstairs, and when she wanted me, she moaned loudly. Gauze pads don’t seem to interfere with moaning.

She was awake when the doorbell rang and managed to croak out, “Ook ou a inow,” which I quickly interpreted as “look out the window” (I was getting better at this). I reported an older model truck parked outside.

” As ike,” she replied, clutching her mirror.

Actually, it was Mike. He had spiky dyed-blond hair and baggy pants. Nice eyes. No obvious tattoos or body piercings. I told him to go on upstairs but that she wasn’t supposed to talk much.

I wasn’t worried. She was modestly attired in penguin PJs, and she had painfully swollen lips and do-not-disturb blood clots, described in the literature as “grayish in appearance and emitting a slight odor.” For atmosphere, there was the wastebasket full of bloody gauze pads.

Her girlfriends came over, bearing Villa Park High School Winter Formal photos. She ditched the gauze pads and talked a whole lot. Her blood clots were fine.

Later, she confided that everyone thought she looked pretty good--for someone who had just had four wisdom teeth pulled. Days later, after the big lips had returned to normal, she announced she had been pretty lucky. She didn’t bleed as much as her friend’s brother, for example, whose entire pillow was soaked in blood. She didn’t get any discoloration of the skin or the dreaded chipmunk cheeks.

But why, she wondered, do we have wisdom teeth?

It’s one of those evolution oddities. Like they say our little toes and earlobes serve no purpose and will disappear eventually. The modern human jaw is not large enough for all the teeth our ancient ancestors had.

Also, I think it’s a rite of passage. You face fear; you conquer fear. You live to talk about it. If chance gives you fat lips instead of chipmunk cheeks, you learn to pretend you’re Kim Basinger.

Now that it’s all over, I miss those gauze pads. They make it hard for a teenager to give you any “ip.”