I had three wisdom teeth taken out (I only had three--my dentist said I must be more evolved than the average person) and was only able to keep the one from the top of my mouth. The other two were stuck under my jaw bone on the bottom of my mouth and had to be pulverized, then they could remove the shards.
First of all, it really wasn't that bad, although I think I'm the only person I know who mostly enjoyed their wisdom teeth extraction experience. I chose a morning appointment because I had to fast. No food or drink, even water, for 8 hours before my surgery. I wasn't terribly nervous, just excited because I had lots of sick leave to use up. As soon as I got in the dentist chair they put the gas mask on me and asked me some generic questions to see when I fell asleep. I don't think I completed even one sentence. I woke up twice during the surgery, both times because the mask was itching my nose. I had been moving my nose to try and scratch the itch (too sleepy to try it with my hand, I suppose) and my facial movements woke me up. Both times I heard my doctor say, "See that?" Then his assistant pulled the mask away from my face, wiped my nose with a tissue, which relieved the itching, and replaced the mask and I was out again.
I think the surgery only lasted about 20 or 30 minutes. I think this is on the long side because, as I mentioned earlier, they had to pulverize two of my teeth and extract the pieces instead of just extracting the teeth. I woke easily and had to go lay down in a recovery room for a while so they could make sure I was coming out of it all right. I was really tired and slobbering over myself because of all the gauze in my mouth. But I think the whole process was harder on my boyfriend. He's really nervous around doctors and he could hear the drilling from the waiting room. After 10-15 minutes, they changed my gauze and sent me home. I gave my boyfriend a note authorizing him to fill my prescriptions and I could sleep.
For prescriptions I received percodan, vicadin, and motrin and instructions on when to use what. Thanks to my ice sling I hardly experienced any swelling and thanks to those presciptions I didn't feel any pain, although I was pretty out of it. I didn't feel any pain until they removed the medicated dressings in the back of my mouth a week after my surgery. Unfortunately, I was back at work and my office building was under construction. So it's hard to know what started the pain--the drilling on the building or just the natural recovery process. This is when I experienced the "sympathy pain" that made my teeth ache from the back to my canines. But I took a Motrin and suddenly I just didn't care any more.
I've gotten an amazing number of hits on this site since I
created it in the fall of 1999. I'd completely forgotten about this
site until my boyfriend noticed all the web traffic. I'd love to hear
from anyone with comments or questions, although I don't intend to
change it much. However, one of these days I will put up a picture of
the one wisdom tooth I got to keep because it's pretty funky looking.
No junk mail, please, and please refer to the site in your subject line
or
I'll probably delete it since I already get a lot of junk mail.
To contact me,
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