So yeah, I finally bowed to the inevitable and agreed to have three wisdom teeth pulled (the fourth one never showed up). Two are on the top and one is on the bottom. I heard the bottoms are worse than the tops.
I’ve already got all my prescriptions filled (including Percocet). I’m not a great pill-swallower so I’m not looking forward to trying to swallow horse pills when my mouth is on fire. The doctor has a great reputation so I’m not worried about that…just about the whole process in general. I’ve only ever been knocked out once before for a surgical thing, and that was in a hospital.
Any advice/tips/info on what to expect (please don’t tell me your horror stories!)? Specifically:
How long is it likely to be before I can eat normal food again? The info I have says swelling lasts from 3-5 days and I’m supposed to eat stuff you don’t have to chew until I feel like trying solid food.
How long is it likely to be before I can go out in public without looking like my face went three rounds with Muhammad Ali?
The procedure is first thing tomorrow morning. Am I deluding myself thinking I can get online for a WoW raid at 8pm tomorrow night?
How much is it gonna hurt? :eek: I’m not keen on pain pills (I have super-Motrin too…that’s fine, but it’s the Percocet I’m more concerned about). Is there any way I’ll be able to do without them?
Thanks in advance for your encouraging stories and tips!
I can only speak of personal experience, and I didn’t get all the wisdom teeth pulled at the same time, but it wasn’t so bad. The worst pain I felt was when they injected the local anaesthesia and even that wasn’t so bad. I was given strong ibuprofen for the pain and I didn’t feel any huge discomfort after the surgery. I didn’t show any outward swelling if I recall correctly, though I didn’t speak well for a couple of days. I think it was about 4-5 days before I dared to eat anything more solid.
EDIT: Unless they give you some pretty strong pain pills, I don’t think your WOW raid will be a problem. Voice chat might be difficult though.
It varies wildly from person to person. I was eating solids by the end of day 2 (albeit bread, things of the like) and almost fully solid by the middle of day 3.
Don’t suck anything through a straw for at least a few days or anything that involves a sucking motion (yeah, cue the jokes). You risk dry socket this way, and I’ve heard that it’s very, very unpleasant. Just don’t do it.
Other than that, plenty of fluids/rest. I don’t even think I needed pain pills, but like I said, it affects people differently.
As Uosdwis mentioned, the anaesthesia was probably the worst part. Also, make sure he puts you under. I had my dentist perform this, but he also doubles as an oral surgeon. He gave me the laughing gas only. Mind you, I was completely out of my mind and didn’t really know what was going on, but you can FEEL the stuff being torn out even if it doesn’t cause pain. Make sure you’re knocked out completely.
There’s so much “it depends” that it’s really hard to say. Wisdom teeth are weird, in that no two are really alike. They can pop out just as easily as any molar, or they can have extra roots and be all sideways-like and require quite a bit of manipulation to remove, and that’s gonna hurt more. Chances are, if yours are out past the gum line (that is, you can see them) that they’re more molar-like than sideways train wreck like, so that’s good.
My SO just had all his teeth pulled on Tuesday morning. Yes, *all of them, and they didn’t even knock him out for it, just used local anesthetic. He spent a pretty miserable day on Tuesday - not least because it was several hours before he could get his Vicodin 'scrip filled - but he found that ice and Popsicles right on the gums helped a whole lot. He was eating pudding and ice cream by Tuesday night and yesterday had soup, jell-o, pudding and a couple of Ensure drinks. He thinks he’ll be up for pasta tonight, and he’s thinking about stopping the Vicodin and ibuprofen today, because he’s not in any pain. (I suggested he stop the Vicodin and cut the ibuprofen in half first, rather than go cold turkey off all the pain meds; it’s easier to keep pain away than get rid of it once it hurts.)
His docs gave us an after-care sheet which commands a soft food diet for 8 weeks, but that’s a lot longer than I had to after a few molar extractions - probably because, did I mention, they yanked ALL his teeth in one session? IIRC, I was told to do soft foods for about a week.
Swelling after extractions tends to peak on the third day post op. You’ll probably be drooling on yourself right after, and not feel like being in public, but once the numbness wears off, you shouldn’t be hideously deformed. The swelling should be on your gums, not your face.
You’ll be on WoW, I’m sure. It’s not nearly as bad as you’re expecting.
*Lots of them were broken off at the gumline, and the rest were doomed to follow, so he had them all yanked so he can get a good set of dentures and be done with it. Dentures get fitted next week!
Get some Antivert (Meclizine) which is over the counter these days, and take it right before you have the procedure and again before you take any pain meds. It is an anti-nausea medication that works very, very well. I tell you this because I had all four of my wisdom teeth out at the same time and the drugs they gave me to do it with made me so queasy that we had to pull the car over on the way home so that I could throw up. Throwing up with four fresh surgical holes in your mouth is not fun. If you have any trouble with nausea due to the Percs the meclizine will help with that if you take it about 15 minutes before the Percs. You will probably need the Percs. At least for me, it was a very, very painful recovery. But then, mine were bony impactions meaning they had to chip away pieces of my jaw bone to free the teeth. Yours may be soft tissue impactions and require a less invasive procedure.
As far as the anesthetic goes, they told me they’re going to be using “twilight anesthetic” and I’m almost certain it’s the same one (Versed?) that they used when I had my other procedure a few years ago–I had absolutely no nausea or ill effects from that, so I’m not too worried about that. Never taken Percocet (or any other pain pill stronger than Motrin), though, so not sure how I’ll react to those. I hope I’m one of those folks who doesn’t need them or who can get by with the Motrins. I’ll definitely write down Antivert, though, and send the spouse after it if it’s needed. Thanks!
I had all four removed under general, they were a good 1.5x the biggest teeth exposed in my head so I had some major holes. It was sore by not at all the most painful thing I’ve encountered, broken bones ache more. I was eating solids after the second day, though be careful! It’s the soft tissues which form and are easily dislodged which will pain you in the weeks to come and not the cut gums themselves.
I’ve had all of them yanked (though not at the same time). The first one was a total nightmare combination of impacted tooth, root tangled around nerve, and an incompetent dentist. The right side of my face was swollen for three days and I was in misery for about a week.
The other three were dreams: I insisted on being knocked out for all of them. The other bottom one was pulled by an orthondontic surgeon because it was also impacted. The drug high wore off in a couple of hours. My jaw was sore, but I was eating relatively solid food by night time (nothing crispy or crunchy though).
The two top teeth were simple one-yank jobs, and I was fine and pretty pain-free as soon as the knock-out gas wore off.
Assuming your experience is more like my last three and not my first one, you’ll probably be okay to raid, but your reflexes will not be quite up to being main tank.
Edited to add: I also had no visible face swelling on any extraction except the first one.
DO NOT DO THIS, wisdom teeth may hurt a bit (maybe a lot if your a wimp, no offense), but having them removed is always a bad idea IMO. Both myself and my brother were told that we had to get them removed 'cause our mouths were ‘too small’ to let them continue shoving the other teeth out of the way. There was this big scare that the wisdom teeth would be cutting into bone and there would be nasty reprocutions, also that junk would get stuck in there and eventually we’d infections and such. I nearly laughed in the dentist’s face, I knew that my brother (seven years older than me) had been just fine (he’s a little over 30 now and still just fine), plus I also knew that wisdom teeth removal is where the bastard made all his money (that and braces, which is a complete scam), and it was easy for him to manipulate suckers 'cause they were in pain while he’s telling that there’s more pain to come. I haven’t seen a dentist (or a doctor, may they rot in hell, along with lawyers :mad: ), for many years, I don’t get sick, don’t have bad teeth (listerine does wonders), and except for minor throbbings from said wisdom teeth (that stopped when I was 20 or maybe 21 at the most) I’ve been perfectly fine, just make sure you brush your teeth .
I had all four of mine removed on a Friday morning. Actually I scheduled brilliantly and worked a midnight shift, went had them removed, then went home and fell asleep. No visible swelling by Saturday, eating normally (more or less, definitely wouldn’t have gone for say potato chips) by the end of the weekend.
Sensitive to very cold or hot foods for a few more days but overall no biggie.
Uh…okay. YMMV, I guess. I’m 46 and it’s been suggested to me before that I have them removed, but never in a “you must do this, wisdom teeth are evil!” way. When I declined, the dentist was fine with that. But last time I went back, he found that the enamel on one of them is starting to weaken (he pointed this laser thingy at one of them…it’s supposed to return numbers in the low single digits–mine was 99). No offense, but this post sounds a little tinfoil-hatty to me. I’m sorry if you had a bad experience with a dentist, but I don’t think that can be extrapolated to every dentist in the world. I don’t feel at all manipulated.
I had three moved at once, then the last one later. It wasn’t a big deal. I was under the entire time, and they gave me nice drugs, etc. I took the opportunity to rest. The anticipation is always the worst.
I’m using percs right now after oral surgery (I had to get a back molar yanked after I broke it), and they’re fairly strong as far as making you sleepy. They really do help with the pain, so I’d keep them around, just in case. If you don’t need them, you don’t have to use them.
Good luck.
Bosstrain – three of those wisdom teeth I had out were impacted. It WAS necessary for them to come out.
My two bottom wisdom teeth have rendered my front bottom teeth permanently crooked. One of them was also abscessed - leaving that alone would have eventually turned my chronically painful lower jaw into a spreading cesspool of infection.
@Infavore…Sure, maybe not all dentists are bad (never actually said that any were bad, maybe misguided and thinking with their wallets), but the fact is that people get told that having them removed is best, and then told what the consequences MAY be, then the ‘scaredy cats’ run back to them when they feel the next throbbing pain - just sayin’. BTW, glad to hear your widom teeth are still good that late in life, further proves my point. Widom teeth are there for a reason, can’t say what it is exactly, but I do feel a little smarter having them :D, along with the rest of my body parts (thank you very much).
That’s the word, ‘impacted’, that’s what I was told after the X-rays, I thought it was a funny term (of course they’re impacted, they’re freaking coming out of your skull when your 18 or so) :smack:
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