Forums » Smalltalk » Losing some fangs

Oh lordy.

Guess who set up a dental surgery appointment for April 18th? Me, of course. I've got these pesky wisdom teeth that are causing my gums grief, so I'm getting them extracted. Nasteh. I've never had a dental surgery of any sort before. I hear it's not nearly as bad as our parents and grandparents spoke of, but still, tooth extraction from under the gum!

Eegads, and I normally LIKE going to the dentist. :C Who else has had their wisdom teeth removed? What's it like?

My older brother had his removed. I wasn't around for it, but he called our mom after. She said he sounded like he was drugged like crazy (but very happy) and dozed off in the middle of their conversation. I don't know what troubles he might have had, though.

I've never had my wisdom teeth removed, but I did have half a dozen root canals done.

From what I know of modern tooth troubles, the procedure itself is usually painless if they sedate properly. It feels weird and uncomfortable, but not painful. The painful parts usually come afterwards when the sedation wears off. Painkillers are your best friend until everything heals up! You'll suffer from some swelling and soreness for a while.

Wisdoom teeth extraction involves stitches, so you have to be careful with eating. Your dentist Will probably explain things much better about aftercare though!

Uuuugh. If it wasn't so necessary I'd just skip it after being told all of that, but hey, surgeries are surgeries and I REALLY need to get these out before they erode my gums or something.

Also gawd, Root canals are awful from what I've heard. I think both my parents have had to have them at some point. :C

I had really bad infections in my jaw and roots. I was in so much agony and pain (even swallowing water made me cry hysterically from pain) that I literally begged my dentist to just drill it open, drain the crap from the tooth and patch me up. They put me on antibiotics for a week and I had to wait until the next week before they wanted to do the root canal. But I couldn't wait. Every day was torture.

Trust me when I say the soreness and pain afterwards was welcome and soothing compared to what I suffered through. If your wisdom teeth are causing you pain right now, and you're going to wait, you'll probably end up in a similar situation where I'm at now. Healing pain is much less awful than infection pain, for sure.

I've gotten my wisdom teeth out. It wasn't too bad.

The biggest thing is stock up on liquid foods and drinks you can "eat" without a straw. You're not allowed to use a straw for something like two weeks to let the stitches heal up.

And then I think they mentioned using salt water to rinse your mouth with to keep infections at bay.

Just follow the instructions your dentist gives you.

If you keep the pain pills going, it's not that big of a deal. Unfortunately for me, the pain pills didn't exactly help all that much and made me loopy enough that I couldn't sit and concentrate on anything long enough to be productive. I pretty much just sat and stared at a tv for several hours a day when I wasn't sleeping.

On a random note: it took me a while after the procedure to like KFC's mashed potatoes again since I correlated them with having my wisdom teeth out.

@Sanne- Oh no, no! My last appointment was in December. I may have waited 2-3 months because I got busy with other duties in my life, but believe me, I got this April 18th appointment because it was the first available one. 8C It's not causing me pain yet unless I eat like a maniac for hours at a time, but I need to let these teeth go regardless.

@Pen- Yikes. Liquid foods and drinks, huh? We usually stock up on soups here (tomato's most common--not full of chunky bits to gnaw on). Plenty of water, milk, occasionally lemonade & tea if we've made some up. Oddly enough I wasn't told to use salt water, but honestly back in December I had a hard time deciphering if I did have an infection or not and I should've really clarified with my dentist. But my jaw isn't falling apart and my gums don't look like a sewage system, so I don't think it's as bad as my mind tries to tell me sometimes.

Though I do sometimes have to pick foodstuff out of the spot where the moving teeth have caused a hole, which is kind of weird and icky.

Honestly, it's not that bad. I actually had mine removed recently and if your lucky you won't swell up a lot. Depends on how developed your wisdoms are. If they like the size of a pea then really you should be fine. Salt water like pen said definitely recommended. Also YES SOUP, PUDDING, ICE CREAM. Though soup and tea can't be burning hot, more like just warm enough to be edible xD otherwise it'll dissolve the stitches too quickly. Ice cream is nice though. I bought three tubs of it and ended up eating it all.

I've had mine out it isn't a horrible experience, the painpills thing after just depends on pain tolerance. I didn't always need my meds and even when I did it was usually just some tylenol but everyone's different and the liquid foods isn't so bad!

Aw man. Far as I can tell (it's been a while since the x-rays), mine are fairly developed. But we'll see how it all goes! I've had pretty decent teeth otherwise. One tiny cavity in the last year and baby teeth that had no adult teeth but cemented themselves in well with all the other teeth I've got (it's some weird medical condition that appears to be genetic? My dad has the same thing).

Well, now I don't feel so nervous now. Whoo! Then again, it IS about a month away, and Monday I go in for x-rays. I imagine a week before I'll be -ing a lot.

Either way, good luck Copper Dragon . Like others have said, I think they drug you to the gills so you likely won't feel much if anything.

This is all reminding me how long it's been since I went to a dentist... and that I can't afford to go to one yet.

Seriously though, I've only seen one maybe twice in my life. I think the last time was 7th grade, when I got my pseudo-filling.

Thank you, DragonShard! I'll be happy to be drugged to the gills, frankly, even if I wake up hours later to the discovery that my parents (who will be helping me out) filmed me saying stupid stuff and put it on Youtube.

And wow, Nova, that IS quite a while ago. What do you mean by psuedo-filling though? Was there not a fully-blown cavity to fill?

Nope. One of my top teeth has an edge that was slowly wearing down the enamel on a bottom tooth, but it wasn't too bad, just an indent. So they stuck some kind of liquid on it that turned really hard, really fast to cover it.

I rather wish they'd gotten rid of the little burs on the inside of a couple of my upper teeth, too. 'S the kind of thing I can't help but poke at, and I sometimes run my tongue raw on them. >.< But hey, that just gives me more reason to see a dentist when I can afford to.

I had mine out right when we were doing Spiral Tower, remember? So one of those long, long RPs I did right after the surgery actually, and it was great. I healed up quickly. Honestly the ickiest part for me was going in to get the stitches snipped out. And your surgeon may choose to do dissolving stitches instead.

Now, Redbeard had his out a couple months ago and that was a little rougher. But that's because he's a butt. His wisdom teeth would come in once every 6 months or so and cause him a lot of pain for about a week but he never did anything about it, so once it receded he would just ignore it. Then finally it was bad enough that he went and got all of them out. One was severely impacted and infected! But he healed up pretty easily.

As for foods. Also, a bag of frozen peas makes an awesome ice pack since they crumble up and mold to your face (just don't let them thaw too much, eww). For foods: yogurt, pudding, jello, cottage cheese, applesauce! And yes, brothy or liquidy soups. After a couple days you can probably do super soft pasta like mac and cheese, if the noodles are soft enough.

@Nova- oh gosh that sounds unpleasant! Teeth burs, eugh! I once had to get one of my braces wires re-cut because the first one was too long and jammed into my gum.

@Heim- And yeah, I remember! I'm still convinced you're made of tougher dragonstuff than me though. From the looks of things and what I've been told, I just have the minor infection and no compactions, so I don't believe they'll be as bad as Redbeard's. Still, we're getting them all out in one go so I won't have to deal with them in the future.


Also we went grocery shopping today. I got a week's worth of soups, pudding, jello, &c. Going in at 9 tomorrow morning, so best case scenario is I'm aware enough to get online later in the day and type in my complicated passwords. Worse case, you don't hear from me 'till Saturday.

I had all four of mine yoinked out because they were in the way of my braces, if I recall correctly. Can't even really remember any horror stories for them because... guess it didn't really hurt all that much Had more trouble with cavities than that, actually. Pro tip: hard candies are BAD for your teeth, as well as sodas @__@ Five gum-line cavities in half a year is NOT FUN Dx

But yeah. Actually, soft foods like pasta, pudding (a great excuse to eat massive amounts ) or jello are fine as well - anything you don't have to chew a lot to get down the gullet. I don't even recall having to get them stitched or anything; the gums just healed up on their own with time and patience. I do remember what a nightmare braces were, though my teeth were rather screwed up in early high school. >.<

It's usually not a problem, really. Just a bit of an annoyance.

Wow okay so I'm home on my phone waiting for my pain meds to kick in. 3/4 teeth pulled, and I wasn't put under. I'm ok though, whoo! It was an unsettling experience.

I'm glad you made it through! Enjoy those pain meds.