Missing: Three teeth

[kitanzi]

No reward offered, thank you very much, I just paid a good chunk to have the dental surgeon take them out. One wisdom tooth went a couple years ago as an emergency procedure when the gums got infected, but the rest finally came out this morning. Apparently my teeth are awesome, but my gums suck, and the worst of the decay was between the molars and wisdom teeth. Keep them all now and lose my molars later, or pull the wisdom teeth now and keep (hopefully) everything else later? Well when you put it like that, sign me up.

Much to my surprise, this isn't as bad as I'd expected. ACat drove me in this morning so they could knock me out for about 45 minutes, and then drove me home to veg for the rest of the day. I have the weekend to recover in, but this is a pretty quick recovery. The surgeon gave me prescriptions for a couple of types of heavy painkillers but suggested Aleve if I can manage it, and also a scrip for an anti nausea medication. I got home, took an Aleve, swapped out gauze pads in my mouth every half hour or so for a few hours, and frankly haven't had more than a mild ache in my jaw. Acat, my angel of mercy, went out and got all the meds plus a buttload of smoothies, juice and yogurt for me, and I think I may have just lucked out with the best reaction I could get. (It doesn't hurt that none were impacted, and apparently ACat was told they were all very easy to pull.)

Has anyone else out there had multiple wisdom teeth pulled? Honestly, to hear the stories I was told at work I expected this to be MUCH worse. I'm very pleasantly surprised. (Now watch me get infected and regret all this.... NOOOOOOOOO)

Comments

[bedlamhouse]

I had all 4 of mine pulled at the same time when I was in college. I don't recall too much problem, but that was    years ago...

[billroper]

Well, the memory is the second thing to go. :)

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Which appears to be the more sensible time when most sensible people sensibly get this taken care of. I've been called many things, but rarely sensible. Especially when it comes to dentists.

[billroper]

My wisdom teeth have never erupted, although they occasionally show up in dental X-rays, so I've never had them taken care of either. With luck, I'll never have to.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

I certainly wish you luck on that! I wouldn't have bothered, except that they were apparently contributing to the peridontal disease and endangering my molars.

[aiela.livejournal.com]

My ex got all four of his pulled on a Friday, and went back to work on Monday. He was on the painkillers the first day, but that was it.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Thats precisely why I scheduled this for Friday, but unless things go drastically bad when I (very carefully) go back to solidish foods in a day or two, I don't think I'll need them Monday. It's gonna be a long time before I tackle, say, popcorn, though.

[wheezinggirl.livejournal.com]

I had all 4 of mine pulled just January of last year. I didn't have any problems immediately following the procedure, but I have regretted the decision ever since.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Why? Were there problems later?

[wheezinggirl.livejournal.com]

yes - it has changed the way my entire jaw works. It has changed my bite. Now, sometimes when I chew the front left teeth scrape together in a very painful way. Its been a year and its gotten a little better but not perfect.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Is there nothing they can do about that?

[wheezinggirl.livejournal.com]

nope, not without my paying for orthodontics, which I am not about to do. The say up front that damage caused to other teeth from the extraction are not their problem. Since this isn't even damage, it is just inconvenience it is even less their problem.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

That completely, utterly sucks :(

[(Anonymous)]

I had all 4 pulled in high school. They told me it would be a big deal and such so I took a week off my part time job. The first day or two were not fun but mostly I recall the week was pretty boring. 3 days would have been enough. I had no problems with healing up. I did get tired of the salt water gargles though.

Keep up with the rinses and hopefully infection wont be a bother for you either.

(Yea, I've heard a bunch of horror stories too.)

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the advice, Masked Stranger. :) I'll be careful with them, I have absolutely no wish for infection.

[hawklady.livejournal.com]

Had all mine extracted in a similar manner -- put me under, cut & yank, home a couple of hours later to pop painkillers and sleep it off. It took a good deal of cutting and work, so there was residual gum pain and stitches, but nothing bad enough to keep me from going to work the next morning.

The only real caveat I can give is that you really, really want to avoid dry socket. I've never had it before, but I know many people who have and it is serious miserable pain. The gum and jaw pain was fairly minor and not a problem except at bedtime (which is when I took the prescription painkillers, saving the ibu for the daytimes).

So let that blood clot form in the extraction spots, and the best way to do that is following the instructions on not doing swishing or sucking on straws or similar things, and avoiding hot drinks/soup/foods that would delay clotting. I used it as an excuse to live off of cold drinks (milk, coke, juice, milkshakes, yogurt) for a couple of days, and had no problem :)

Yay for a relatively easy extraction!

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a lot of these horror stories include dry socket. So that means knocking the scab off? Wouldn't another form?
I don't appear to have any cutting, and they didn't mention stitches, so yay for nonimpacted wishdom teeth. My doctor specifically suggested Aleve since it apparently lasts about 8 hours, rather than ibuprophen or aceteminiphin. I like cold drinks, but it's hard to find many that have enough protein that I don't feel like I'm full of sugar. Lots of good fruit stuff, but only yogurt seems to have any protein to speak of.

[hawklady.livejournal.com]

A bit too woozy and ready-for-bed to go surfing for the info, so here's what I remember:

Technically dry socket is when you've lost the 'plug' of clot so that the bone and nerve are exposed.

The blood clot forms inside the socket in the jawbone where the tooth used to be. Depending upon how they close up any incisions, there may or may not be a scab on top of that clot, instead of just scabbing around stitches. If this clot is lost, then the bone and the nerve endings are exposed to air and what you eat, and that's where the pain comes into play. You get bits of food in there and OUCH.

Under normal circumstances, the clot eventually fades away but by then the nerve and bone are no longer 'raw' and painful. The socket usually ends up filling up with new bone, but that's a much longer procedure.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Had all my wisdom teeth removed when I was about 20ish, 2 on each side at the same time, 2 weeks apart. One had started to be feelable under the gum, but not come out, and xray showed another would've come up under a molar, and a 3rd had otherwise crappy orientation, so... out with the lot. No particular problem, was basically on soup/soft/liquidish food and/or eating on one side of mouth only for awhile, partly 'cause I just didn't want anything to get stuck in the "holes". The distinctly worst bit was by far the local anesthetic shot. That was both uncomfortable & hurt.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

I was actually knocked out, but they clearly shot me up with SOMETHING since my lower jaw was numb around the chin and mouth like novacaine for hours after. It's only really starting to wear off, and this is roughly 8 hours later.

[singlemaltsilk.livejournal.com]

Years... er... decades ago, I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled the day before Thanksgiving -- because it was the only time I'd have a four day weekend to recover.
I politely, but emphatically, refused my mother's offer of a 'turkey milkshake'...

I developed one small pocket of infection, which was easily dealt with. Hope you have an easy-peasy recovery!

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

<weakly>

Turkey... milkshake? Um, yeah, I think refusing that was a good call.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

thank you! But... turkey milkshake? Ick! ACat has pointed out that there are protien powders you can add to milkshakes now, but they all look pretty icky.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

I had all four done at once. I was in fairly serious pain for a while, but there are several reasons why you shouldn't expect your experience to be like mine:

1) Both of my lower wisdom teeth were laterally impacted: this means that their "chewing" surface was 90° off from where it should be, pointing into the roots of my 12-year molars. If they'd ever tried to erupt, they would have been moving forward rather than up. (Given that I spent 5 years in braces getting my bite corrected, letting my wisdom teeth shove my lower teeth around was NOT on the menu.)

2) I have a small jaw. This means that in order to excise the lower wisdom teeth, they had to cut open the gum (because they never erupted), and then break each tooth into pieces in my jaw and remove the pieces. There was no room to get around the tooth and remove it in one piece.

3) One of my favorite sleeping positions is apparently face down, with my chin shoved into my pillow and my teeth clenched. (I realized this only over the past few years, but it explains a lot of things about why I found having braces so painful.) This means that I ended up putting pressure on my already-unhappy jaw and TMJ (small jaw means more stress on the TMJ to have your mouth open wide enough for dental work), which meant I was in more pain for longer.

On the other hand, because everything was under the gum, which was stitched closed after the procedure, I had far less worry about dry socket. I did discover a way to drink out of a straw without putting suction on the wounds, though. Put the tip of the straw fairly far back along the roof of your mouth (gagging is bad, but anything short of that is good). Seal your tongue around the straw, making sure that you have a seal along the alveolar ridge below your teeth (so no suction is transmitted to the upper teeth). Create suction by opening a space between your tongue and soft palate, leaving the sides and tip of your tongue in place. (Mid-tongue goes down and soft palate goes up, creating a hollow between them.) If the tip of the straw is in this space, the vacuum you create will draw the contents of the straw in.

I also asked to be knocked out - I knew already that they'd probably need to break the teeth to get them out, and I didn't want to be around for it. They did shoot me pretty comprehensively full of local while I was out, so I was still numb when I woke up, and for hours afterwards.

Hope your recovery is smooth!

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am infinitely grateful that mine were not impacted, all told. I have a fairly small jaw, and I imagine that's why I have the generalized jaw ache, from having it pried apart to give access.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

I had my wisdom teeth taken out in high school - but for me, it was a surgical removal, they couldn't come through on their own at all. I had a bad paranoia reaction to one of the sedatives, that sucked, but clearly that hasn't happened to you. I hope you feel better soon, and I will be thinking of you.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

It hasn't, no. A bit more pain is kicking in, but I do have the stronger prescribed drugs, one of which appears to be "Don't make any damn plans, you are about to SLEEP", which sounds pretty good.

[gingicat]

I had mine pulled for similar reasons in my twenties - aside from ruining a pillow by drooling blood into it while I slept off the anaesthetic (with a teabag on the wound so that the bleeding would eventually stop), it was fine.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Ow and likewise ick. I'm glad that was the worst of it, at any rate.

[gorgeousgary]

Another easy patient here...had all four pulled in my late-20's, two were seriously impacted (lying sideways and rubbing on my jaw, which is what made me finally pull them). Same deal as other folks here; had the operation on Friday and was well on the way to recovered by Monday. I don't recall any salt-water gargles, but I do recall using a curved medicine-dropper like thing to squirt warm salt water into the sockets.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a very similar idea, just a more directed delivery. Yeah, the dentist seemed somewhat surprised that all four of mine came through perfectly normal, where they belonged, and no problems. This appears to be somewhat unusual, dunno.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

I had all four of mine done at once and while it wasn't pleasant, it only took a day or so to go from lots of pain to stiff jaw muscles. Took me about 5-6 days before I could chew solid food again.

So congratulations!

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

thank you! Yeah, the first 24 hours seem to have definitely been the worst, and even the weren't all that bad. As long as I avoid the dry socket thing everyone keeps talking about, I should be good.

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

I had mine out when I was in my middle to late teens (two sessions, one in high school, one after freshman year of college). Back in those days (early to mid '60s), this was standard procedure to have them out during the teenage years, and the dentists used that gas where you see vertigoing stars as you go under. Other than that, the extractions were non-memorable. Which may just be due to the passage of so much time since I had my Wise Guys out. (:-/

And yes, do follow destructions for socket care. I had a rear tooth extracted several years ago, but again, no problems.

Should I mention something about Microsoft making other products that suck, like straws, for those smoothies and juice? No? OK, didn't think so. :)

Best,
Ann O.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

I got something in an IV to knock me out, which I much preferred to the gas they gave me for the shoulder surgery. I didn't even notice when I went out. So far so good.... it's been over 24 hours, and I am at least off the cold and liquid limitations. I celebrated with very soft scrambled eggs with cheese.

[madfilkentist]

I had all four wisdom teeth pulled, two of them impacted, one by a full 90 degrees and requiring bone cutting, when I was a graduate student.

After that I was raiding the cafeteria for ice for a week or two.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Owowowowowow. I just bet you were.

-2 Wisdom

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

I had both* of my wisdom teeth pulled sometime when I was home from college. No real problems. The worst was when the novacaine shot wore off hours later; there was lots of pain from the shots themselves. I didn't have full anaesthetic, I had sodium pentathol, which was awesome (nifty buzz! time dilation as I watched the clock's second hand go whizzing around!) and I'm glad I have no idea how to procure it 'cause I'd be an addict. :-)

* Yes, "both". I only ever had two wisdom teeth (the top two, IIRC). Never had the other two.