I had my gum surgery today: I left the periodontist’s office at about 10:20am, and went straight to work afterwards (well, I did stop at Giant to drop off the antibiotic rinse prescription).
Right now I’m sore, and with a bit of a headache, but I’m mostly ok. I’m still at work, but will be playing the afternoon by ear. I think the novocaine has almost completely worn off. I’ll be taking some Advil soon. 
I have some dissolving stitches in my gum, but I haven’t done any poking around up there with my tongue yet to see how things feel. Right now I’m hungry, and thinking that this surgery will be my excuse for eating mac & cheese for lunch and pasta for dinner. 
My results wound up better than expected: the options I was facing were crown or extraction, but the periodontist said that now he thinks I might not need either. What he and my dentist thought were abcesses on the xrays turned out to be deep nicks, most likely from when my wisdom teeth were removed 10-12 years ago. He guesses that the one next to this tooth was impacted and needed to be cut up for removal, and that this tooth got accidentally nicked in the process. So in addition to removing a chunk of gum he smoothed out/reduced the nicks as much as possible, and if everything heals ok I won’t need any further work. Yay!
I had fairly major gum resection surgery and bone grafts about 5 years ago because of periodontitis. It ended up taking 11 hours (from 8 AM to 7 PM), which was quite a bit longer than the periodontist expected. The only thing I remember about the surgery itself is them putting me under with an IV, and them bringing me to around 3 PM so I could go to the bathroom (I still hope I didn’t embarrass myself there).
I was out of work for a week because I was taking some pretty strong codeine medication. (As an aside, codeine makes me sicker than a dog, so they also prescribed an anti-nauseant. Couldn’t they have just prescribed something besides codeine?) I also had to wear clear plastic splints for six weeks (think athletic teeth guards), which made eating a bit of a challenge – I never thought I’d get tired of chocolate pudding, but I did. On the positive side, the splints broke me of my nail biting habit, which I’d had since I was a kid.
On the negative side: The surgery cost $6000, and wasn’t covered by my crappy dental insurance. My gums are now recessed to the point where I don’t like to smile really big; you can see a lot more of the tooth. Also, I have to get my teeth cleaned every three months, and I’m more susceptible to cavities.
On the positive side: I have my own teeth. All in all, I’m satisfied.