I had all four extracted on my lunch hour, then went back to work. No problem.
As a past future librarian and one who’s definitely had some moments in oral hell- the worst part for me was hearing the cracking. Unfortunately I was underinsured at the time plus I have immediate family members who have had really bad reactions to dental anesthesia (the “knock your butt out” kind, not the local) so I only had the novocaine and the gas. The dentist took the right lower (cracked in an accident) and portions of the impacted left lower. While I couldn’t feel anything in my mouth I could “sorta kinda” feel the motion of their hands and of course I could see when I opened my eyes and that godawful sound… eewwwww. I remember pledging myself to Hitler for the next 9 million years, confessing to the murder of Sharon Tate and Voychek Frykowski and begging to be allowed to “be nice” to the hygienist’s Labrador Retriever if they’d just get it over with.
Panache is Hercules if he went back to work in an hour because I had it done on a Friday, don’t remember anything until Sunday and was still groggy on Monday. How people had anything done by dentists before effective anesthesia is absototalutely beyond me.
PS- I’ve been advised to have the other two pulled but… not yet. I’ll wait until they cause pain or emotional damage.
That’s what I was going to do. The last two never ended up hurting, but they were so broken and cracked and crumbled that I felt it was only a matter of time until I woke up in agony.
I probably shouldn’t have read this. I’m getting 2 of my four unerupted wisdom teeth out tomorrow–novocaine only (hell, if I get through foot surgery and 2 c-sections wide awake, the tooth thing should be easy right? Right?) Plus, the one time I had general anesthesia (for surgery on my deviated septum) I puked tomato soup (but unlike Ruffian, mine came out the usual way rather than through my nose).
The doc already warned me about the numbness due to the nerve, but now you’ve got me worrying about it. Ah well. He’s only pulling 2 at a time because, he informs me, people of my advanced age heal more slowly. If I were a teen, he’d pull them all at once. We’ll see how it goes.
Tooth #1: Began to hurt when I was at college, so the next time I came home, I had to choose a dentist. Word to the wise? Never choose a dentist because his son is cute. Trust me on this. After spending 2 hours in the chair on just novacaine, in walks the cute son who looks at me like I’m Leatherface. I’m covered in blood and bits of gore as Dad had been using both feet and a chainsaw to try to get the tooth out. Dad later says he couldn’t tell the tooth was impacted. The only good thing he did was prescribe vicoden.
Tooth #2: Begins to hurt and I find a new dentist… at a denture clinic. Smartest move I ever made. Boy could this guy pull teeth!
Tooth #3: Is impacted. And still there. I’m 38 and we’re quite happy together. I’ve named her Sheila. My current dentist understands my “issues” and says it can stay until there are problems.
Tooth #4: What tooth #4? The only good thing I got from my mother is the family trait of only 3 wisdom teeth.
I’m having a molar yanked today, in about two hours, in fact. They’re not doing sedation, just the novocaine. Now I’m scared.
My wisdom tooth extraction went pretty well. For me, it was more of an interesting experience than a painful one. It was pretty cool to feel the doctor exert the force to pry my teeth out, and hear the suction as they left, without feeling any pain. I also got to use laughing gas for the first time.
I also was worried that the numbness would never go away. Before the operation, the doctor told me that there was a slight chance that my chin would stay numb forever, and that freaked me out. It went away in a few days, though.
My most vivid memory of the incident is seeing a pint of blood spill from my mouth onto my dog as I bent down to pet her after coming home.
I had all four pulled as a sophomore in college–all four were impacted, so out they came. Since I am what is delicately referred to as a “fearful patient,” I had nitrous oxide as well as general plus a teddy (the kind you hold, not the kind you wear) and several family members for support. There wasn’t much grossness afterward, except for the two bloody gauze pads that everyone forgot to take out of my mouth. I found them two days later. That was even grosser than it sounds.
Recovery was slow, and it took me about a week on the couch before I could even begin to think about doing anything and another week to actually do anything strenuous like sit up. Part of the problem was that I got dry sockets and it hurt like hell. I had to get some extra dental care (too fuzzy to remember what) and some stronger drugs to make it all go away.
But man, the drugs were sweet. I’d be willing to get another tooth pulled just to get hold of some of that stuff again.
I got all four of them out when I was 14. They hadn’t fully come in yet, but they were going to come in very impacted (seeing as there’s no room left in my jaw), and my orthodontist said they neded to come out.
I went in on the Friday before Christmas break. I had a bad reaction to the general anesthetic–I came out of it sobbing, for some reason (probably related to in-life turmoil). My jaw was numb for about twelve hours; when it woke up, it felt like pins and needles. The pain lasted a few days. I think I took maybe two of the pain pills they prescribed me (one before going to sleep the first night, and one the following night). All they seemed to do was knock me out, (and how; I slept through Alien on the Surround Sound in our basement), at least I could sleep through the pain. After maybe four days, I was back to normal.
But, man, that general anesthetic. That really, really messed with my head.
Ohhhh yeah. From the annals of the Life and Times of Dr. Woo . . .
It was 1974 and I was 20 years old. I was scheduled to have the right upper and lower (all impacted) wisdom teeth extracted on a Friday morning. Before leaving for the appointment, I watched the morning news on TV and based on Betty Ford’s personal recommendation, I gave myself my first breast self exam. Hey, it was Dr. Woo’s healthcare day, I guess. Anyway, I did the ol’ BSE and found a lump. Actually a pea-sized lump and a few smaller ones. Crap, I say. Now I gotta do an out-of-cycle gyno appointment (I was on the pill at the time and saw the doc 1X year religiously for my prescription). Oh well, no biggie. Off to the oral surgeon . . .
So I got into the chair and the guy starts talking about the novocaine. “Novocaine?!?! I want to be under general anesthesia! Further, YOU, your staff and your neighbors want me to be under general anesthesia.”
No dice - he wouldn’t go for it. He explained that this was a straightforward, absolutely routine procedure and there was no need for the expense and risk of a general. We argued a bit, me citing my appalling intolerance to dental pain, he reassuring me that it would be over before I knew it, but in the end, I went for the novocaine.
He shot me up real good, and then started in with the pipe wrench. Well, he obviously made an incision first, but all I remember is the damn pipe wrench cracking and splintering my teeth. Horrible. The force he used made me even imagine it was my jawbone, not my teeth, that was being crushed and the pieces dragged out through the bleeding wound. Heh. Nevertheless, the doc was right: I felt very little actual pain, thanks to the 12 or so novocaine jabs.
That night was no fun, but I had a date with some new guy I was really hot for, so I went. I was a little woozy from the Tylenol 3 (oooh, heavy drugs now!), but I went on the date and everything was fine. I just kept my mouth shut as much as possible to keep from disturbing the packing (and my date). I stuck to a liquid diet for the rest of the weekend and just generally dreaded the following week when the other two would be coming out.
But here’s the ironic, important-life-lesson-for-Dr. Woo part of the story: the Monday after that first extraction, I was waiting on a customer at the bank I worked at, and mentioned that I had my wisdom teeth out (I was still swollen at that point, and it was noticeable). Now, this particular customer was a bit unusual in that she’d had about a third of her face removed some years prior. She’d had some type of cancer and she had all the tissue, skin and bone removed from her left eye down to her neck, and from her left ear over to her nose. She kept the wound covered with gauze, and it was some taping job she had to do - there was a lot of missing tissue that she had to cover. I’d never discussed this with her, it was just common knowledge at the bank that she’d had cancer and the radical (to us) surgery was the result.
So anyway, it turned out that my oral surgeon was the doctor who had performed the surgery on my customer, 20 years before. I agreed with her that he was a good doctor, but whined about his reluctance to give me general anesthesia for the procedure.
She (my customer) then told me that our mutual doctor had an artificial leg. I’d noticed a limp, but it didn’t really register at the time. According to Mrs. Ward, the doc had been a paratrooper in WWII, and during the spring of 1945 had parachuted into a forest in which some German troops were hiding. My doctor broke his leg badly (multiple compound fractures) during his landing, and in fact ended up hung up in a tree. He was bleeding badly, and needed to get away from the enemy troops, so he did what he had to do . . . with his pocket knife. He’d already had some medical training, so hopefully he had a good knowledge of anatomy, but . . . damn. He was eventually rescued and lived to be a successful suburban oral surgeon.
Pretty funny to think I was complaining to a woman who’d had a huge portion of her face removed about anesthetic for a tooth extraction performed by a man who’d amputated his own leg.
Neither the doctor nor my customer have any idea that the series of events I just related were a really good lesson for me. Sometimes (who am I kidding - most times) my “issues” are pretty damn trivial, and I just need to suck it up and stop being a wienie. And that a lot of regular ol’ everyday people really have guts.
Oh, and the lumps in my boobs? Still there after all these years. Guess I didn’t really have to go to the gyno while my mouth was still numb after all.
Well, I had my wisdom teeth extracted back in the day when it was illegal, so I had to pay 50 bucks and a can of beans to a certain “Mrs. Smith” who led me through a dark alley into a seedy-looking hardware store next to a garbage dump where the dentist was skulking. There my arms and legs were pinned down by his trusty manservant and Helga, his 275 pound wife with a hairlip, as he went to work on my teeth with a handheld electric drill while wearing a dirty surgical mask both to disguise his identity and minimize the stench of smoke and blood while my screams and ragged gasps echoed off the mildewed tile. Afterword, they let me convalesce in an unused pantry for two weeks or so until I could walk again and show my face in public without frightening horses and small children.
Boy, I’m glad that’s over with. :o
OK, that didn’t happen. I was 16 when I had them taken out over summer vacation. I went into the hospital early in the morning and was home by that afternoon. I ate yogurt and ice cream for the first two days and then worked my way up to solid food. I originally had two weeks vacation from the supermarket, but after one week, my boss called and offered me extra hours if I showed up early. I did, and my coworkers laughed at my chipmunk cheeks . . . a lot.
That’s it.
I was 13, and the surgery was 3 days before my birthday, on a Friday the 13th. My bottom wisdom teeth were trying to grow sideways instead of up, so they were crowding my other teeth. I understand this is an office procedure now, but back then they had to put me in the hospital and knock me out with the IV and everything.
I woke up to see them sliding the IV needle out of my arm, and proceeded to yark up blood all over the poor nurse who got stuck with me that day.
I swelled up like a blowfish, but oddly didn’t bruise (normally brushing against a dust bunny bruises me), and I was bound and determined that I was going to eat my traditional birthday pizza on my birthday, 3 days later. I did.
I had mine taken out either my junior or senior year of high school. I was put under, but I think I came out of it halfway, because I remember hearing an assistant talk and hearing a drill running. The dentist looked a bit concerned when my first words out of recovery were something like “ih ou oooo a il?”. Which translates to “Did you use a drill?” (I had to write that one down).
I remember tripping a bit looking at the fluorescent lights as my dad escorted me out of the office. I had to use a mirror to eat that night (applesauce and macaroni and cheese) because I couldn’t reliably get my dining utensils into my mouth. The next day I had a tuna melt.
I started my habit of drinking lots of water because I couldn’t stand the taste in my mouth. All in all–no complications and a quick recovery.
Mine were taken out in January this year.
I did it in the dentist’s chair, under a “twilight” anaesthetic. But it knocked me out far enough that it might as well have been a general.
I remember talking to the anaesthesiologist as I went under, partway through I remember saying “Ow, Ow, Ow” and then the next thing I know I was sitting up and being guided toward the recovery lounge.
I got very grumpy at that point, because as soon as the anaesthetic started to wear off, it started to hurt like buggery. And they wouldn’t give me painkillers there, I had to go and get them from a pharmacy.
All told it wasn’t terrible. It hurt like buggery the first day, and kind of ached for a few days afterward. I was eating softish food by the third day, and mostly eating normal food a couple of days after that. No dry socket, no infections. The only problem was and still is that removing the upper left tooth left an indentation in my jaw, and I still get food caught in there to this day. But some creative toothpick and tongue work will often get that out 
OK - my horror story. Went in to get 4 impacted wisdom teeth removed. Doc thought it was funny that I was scared of needles, so he kept making jokes about rusty needles, bent needles, etc. Meanwhile, my heart is racing faster & faster, so when they finally give me the anesthesia, BAM! I not only went out, but the next thing I remember is someone yelling at me “COME ON! BREATHE!”
Then I remember them saying that they can not put me under again, but that I will be OK - just keep my eyes closed. I do that until they said “Brace yourself. I have to use a mallet”. I did not believe them & opened my eyes to see a big hammer coming down at my FACE! Unnnnnghhhhh. I close my eyes again - and I think I passed out.
Fast forward to home. I lost track of time & let the pain meds wear off. Take a pill & experience the LONGEST 30 minutes of my life while I wait for them to take hold.
My father recently just had local when he had his remaining teeth out to put his dentures in. Jesus. Then he went back to work afterwards. Wouldn’t even take the painkillers they gave him.
Oh, and the tooth came out fine-the procedure took maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Prior to that, I had about a half-an hour letting the novocaine set in completely. And it took almost five hours to wear off completely afterwards. That was the worst-those needles pinch. And when it squirts on your tongue-blech.
All I felt was some major pressure, uncomfortable, but I could deal.
They gave me Darvocet. I think I’ll wait and take it in about an hour or so. Before I go to bed.
A friend of mine had her heart stop when they took her wisdom teeth out. Odd girl, that. Love her to death, though.
I had all four pulled at once by a Navy dentist when I was in Marine Corps boot camp. They didn’t even tell me what they were doing until I was in the chair. I got only novacaine, and I was probably lucky to get that. The top ones I didn’t even feel coming out, but the bottom ones were torture. They couldn’t get a grip with their tools, so they had to grind away with the drill. I was shaking the walls from screaming. When it was finally over I got no stitches, just four pits in the back of my mouth. I got some prescription Motrin for the pain.
So then I’m on light duty for the rest of the day, which means the drill instructors aren’t supposed to thrash you, but they did anyway. I could have said something and got out of it, but that just meant you got it double the second you were off light duty. Also, being boot camp, you ate what you were given, which meant I was getting corn and peas stuck in the pits for weeks.
Considering how horrific the whole thing was, I recoverd OK. I guess it helped that there were many other new forms of pain that I was learning about at the time.
At that point I think I’d have left to find a new doc. Guess what scares me the most about the dentist? Needles! Other things aren’t fun, but it’s the needles that send me into a near-panic. What a jerk.
I don’t have an interesting story, except that they had to remove my bottom wisdom teeth from my jaw when I was 12 because they were blocking my next regular molars. Such fun. Not. The top ones were easy; no drugs, just local, the first one took about ten seconds and the other one maybe a couple of minutes. I got off lucky.