Wisdom Teeth (Suck!)
I'm pretty sure mine are starting to bother me. Intermittently over the past week my jaw was been sore, I've had the occasional headache in my temples or forehead, and my cheeks and chin have been slightly swollen. Sucks. Going to some oral surgeon guy tomorrow to get some x-rays and the like.
So, who here has gone through this "adventure"? Have you had teeth pulled or surgically removed, and how many?
All things were great until suddenly last Monday all this started. I knew I had one wisdom tooth that was slightly lower than the others and probably needed to be looked in to, but my dentist wasn't concerned about the others. Ironically it is the other side of my mouth that I've started to have these issues.
I wasn't too keen on getting this done, but at this point if getting them pulled will get my life back to normal I say let's do it and get it over with ASAP!
So, what about you?
So, who here has gone through this "adventure"? Have you had teeth pulled or surgically removed, and how many?
All things were great until suddenly last Monday all this started. I knew I had one wisdom tooth that was slightly lower than the others and probably needed to be looked in to, but my dentist wasn't concerned about the others. Ironically it is the other side of my mouth that I've started to have these issues.
I wasn't too keen on getting this done, but at this point if getting them pulled will get my life back to normal I say let's do it and get it over with ASAP!
So, what about you?
Comments
Some call this IV sedation "Twilight Sleep". No serious professional uses this term.
Oh yes, and sooner rather than later.
--B
Ask for some valium going in...
Get the nitrous while it is done...
Then make sure to get some good painkillers for the days after.
It's like a government approved phish concert.
Hope you are not afraid of blood either. When I got my wisdom teeth removed my mouth was like a faucet of blood for the day after. You basically have to just shove a load of gauze in your mouth let it soak it up. Dump it and Repeat.
The older you are the slower you will recover is the lesson I learned. I'm 2 years old than my bro, it took him only 4 days to recover, but took me 2 weeks, though my procedure was a bit more difficult because they were impacted pretty good.
It's really funny when you first wake up, you say the strangest things...
First 15 hours of my time after the surgery was spent sleeping on frozen peas, flipping over every 30 minutes. It REALLY hurt to eat, mainly because of the stitched up wounds, like rubbing lemon juice into a cut. I survived on slimfast for the first 2 days.
So, what I would recommend is this:
-Have someone you trust take care of you, they'll need to support you and drive you home and put you into bed.
-You'll probably have to take pain killers
-The person looking over you will have to have a kitchen timer or something, sleep on an ice pack, and switch sides every 30 minutes, this reduces swelling later on, do this for as long as you can up to 24 hours.
-Your going to have to have gauze in the backs of your jaws until you stop bleeding... ALOT! Make sure you sleep on a towel or paper towels that get changed every so often.
-have lots of soft, non-acidic, non-gritty foods on hand. Jello and Slimfast really were a godsend.
-After the first week, you'll need to get your hands on one of those rubber water squirter things that they use for babies (for their nose???
Conclusion? IT SUCKED! I rather get my appendix removed again, not being able to eat was the worst torture ever
I just wish my current problems cropped up before I visited the dentist two weeks ago. That way I would have at least gotten their opinion on the matter. Instead everything was fine at the time, so the only advice I have from them was for the one tooth that wasn't considered a top priority. They thought the others looked fine.
Oh well, we'll see what the man says tomorrow. Ideally I won't need to get more than one out, but of course being naive and easily tricked by psychosomatics, I have to fear getting a bunch of teeth pulled.
1) if you don't typically have problems being put under, insist on being so.
2) don't plan anything for like a week. some people are up and about after a day or two, but others feel miserable for much longer. allow time for recovery. expect not to be able to eat solid foods for a couple of weeks. and don't get food stuck in your stitches, that can get ugly.
here in Macedonia, people think it's crazy that i've had my wisdom teeth pulled (why would they do that??) and no one i know here has ever had it done.
For my lowers, the one that is recessed and at a slight angle will require some choppin'. The other, while fully exposed, may require some extra work depending on how the roots go.
My top two wisdom teeth are in good shape, but the theory goes that they'll shift with the bottom two missing and could eventually be problematic in the years ahead.
The top set should be easier to pull as the tissue is softer, but the bottom two are the ones that are a hassle. Lucky for my my jaw is in good shape and my nerves aren't in the way or anything.
So I have 3 options:
* Do the bottom two with local anesthesia. (cheapest)
* Do the bottom two with IV anesthesia.
* Do all four with IV anesthesia. (most expensive)
At this point I'm inclined to get the good stuff (IV) and get all four taken out. Normally I'd say if they aint broke don't fix 'em, but since I've been going through hell the past week, I'll already be under, and they'll heal far faster now than in 10-20 more years, I think I should just bite (hah!) the bullet and get 'em all done. If I'm out and drugged up do I really care how much is done? Cost isn't too big of a deal even though I'll be paying out of pocket.
So I'm thinking to do it Friday afternoon so I can recover over the weekend and maybe take Monday/Tuesday off if needed. Furthermore, I plan to work at home this week so I can't get sick from grody coworkers or BART passengers and the like.
I also got a prescription for some pain killers and antibiotics to take before and after. Just means that Thursday night I won't get to drink as much beer as I usually would at pub night.
I don't think it'll be fun, but better to get it over with. Right?
Originally posted by ShawnJ
oh man greatest week of my life. i remember drinking a beer while on painkillers and it fucked me up hilariously-- like 20 second delays to answering questions haha. whatever i was on tho, combined with my diet made for some serious constipation. read the side effects of whatever you're taking and plan accordingly. like eating some metamucil wafers. the apple flavor is kinda tasty.
Supposedly, the codone derivatives (Hydrocodone, Oxycodone) produce the side effect of constipation. I was on Vicodin (Hydrocodone) for a spell after shattering my wrist last June, and I had a totally opposite reaction. That is, the opposite of constipation, and when I had a beer, it wasn't fun at all: it just made the pain increase.
I have no experience with the painkillers afterwards and whether they would help because I refuse to take such things based off my family history. (My family is full of addicts of various sorts)
You will bleed some. There are big holes in your mouth where teeth used to be and sometimes some stitches.
Nick
The worst part was, after I got home and watched the keynote (it was streamed), my parents decided to go shopping somewhere (either a BJs or Costco) and I decided it would be a good idea to get out of the house. About 30 minutes into their food shopping, the medication they had used to dull the pain wore off. I don't think I'll forget that day any time soon.
Thankfully, they had knocked me out for this oral surgery. In fact, they scared me before I went under by having me count backwards from 100. I got to 0 and stared at them before they realized they didn't have it turned on. My brother was not so lucky. He had a 'sniffle' the day he went in to get his wisdom teeth pulled out so they refused to give him anything other than a local. He was in agony. My mother was outside waiting for him and said that it sounded like he was being tortured. It didn't help that he was able to see blood gush out of his mouth at one point during the procedure and that he was fairly young at the time.
So yeah, I agree with the points already made.
1.) If you have the option of being put under, do it.
2.) Plan for a good amount of time to recover. You're experiencing minor discomfort and headaches now. It would probably be wise to set aside 5-7 days for this. You can always go back to work early if you don't need that much time.
When it was time to go I asked if they could fill up a trash bag with nitrous so I could take some home.
The recovery is easy & you will have no memory of the experience at all. What you do remember will probably be very funny to you afterwards.
good luck!
ps: I had all 4 wisdoms done at once. No problems with pain or swelling after. None. Guess I got lucky.
Definitely going with the IV drugs and I'll do all 4 so I never have to deal with this crap again.
The upside is if I snuff it, it'll probably be pretty pain free!
A few of my friends have said they had bad reactions to the vicodin making them throw it up before any pain-killing had begun. Has anyone experienced this? The ones for which it did work became kind of hyper aware and got freaked out really easily, is that normal?
Originally posted by Lupa
A few of my friends have said they had bad reactions to the vicodin making them throw it up before any pain-killing had begun. Has anyone experienced this? The ones for which it did work became kind of hyper aware and got freaked out really easily, is that normal?
No. Usually -- and especially on the first dose -- it makes you very sleepy. That's about it.
Originally posted by ShawnJ
oh man greatest week of my life. i remember drinking a beer while on painkillers and it fucked me up hilariously-- like 20 second delays to answering questions haha. whatever i was on tho, combined with my diet made for some serious constipation. read the side effects of whatever you're taking and plan accordingly. like eating some metamucil wafers. the apple flavor is kinda tasty.
Heh. My experience exactly. They gave the "twilight sleep" or whatever it is, pulled all four. I have very vague memories of stuff happening, but nothing bad.
Being a veteran drug abuser, I naturally wanted to have fun with in my befuddled state after they got me out of the chair. They put my in a curtained cubicle to chill, but found me wandering around in an empty examination room, laughing quietly at the machinery....
I was still drinking then and naturally paid no heed to the "if you drink while taking these pills your breathing will stop" warnings.
Quite a remarkable high. Nothing out of control, just massive, massive satisfaction with everything exactly as it was.
Mind you, I was doing this at my job, that being the sort of thing that ended up motivating to stop drinking and drugging.