I am now short two wisdom teeth

[Margalis]

Ugh.  What a disaster. When they injected the novacaine into my cheek it immediately began swelling for some reason. A lot. Then the novacaine in the bottom of my mouth didn't take at all, they had to re-inject me about 7 times. Now I am sitting here with an ice pack on my face, miserably, oozing blood.

[WayAbvPar]

You should have demanded that they knock you out.

Did they at least hook you up with a scrip for painkillers? Vicodin can make it all better. I think I would give up a tooth every year or so if I could keep myself in all the Vicodin I deem necessary  :-D :-D :-D

[Johny Cee]

Ouch.

Seriously,  getting put to sleep is the only way to go.  When I had my wisdom teeth out,  they woke me up and I asked when they were going to start.... 

[stray]

You're a madman!

[Margalis]

The surgery itself was not bad, I don't mind that sort of thing. I think it's kind of cool actually to hear the cracking and stuff. The swelling is really annoying though, my left cheek is like twice the size of my right. When I opened my mouth to take out the gauze I felt a really sharp pain in my jaw, hope it wasn't the stich popping out.

[Selby]

Seriously,  getting put to sleep is the only way to go.

No way!  I wanted to make sure they took the right ones!  I watched the entire procedure through the doctor's glasses.  It was comforting to know that he took the right ones.  I've never been under and have no idea how I'll react, would rather not find out then =P

[stray]

The surgery itself was not bad, I don't mind that sort of thing. I think it's kind of cool actually to hear the cracking and stuff. The swelling is really annoying though, my left cheek is like twice the size of my right. When I opened my mouth to take out the gauze I felt a really sharp pain in my jaw, hope it wasn't the stich popping out.

You like the cracking sound? I've taken a lot of pain, but I'm a pussy when it comes to teeth. Got knocked out when my wisdom teeth were pulled.

Although.... I smacked face first on the street in a skateboard wipeout when I was 18 or so. Crack and chipped my four front teeth on the spot. Then drove myself to the dentist for emergency work after that. Somehow, it didn't exactly hurt then. Maybe because of shock?

I had to get a root canal not too long ago though, and it was a freaking awful experience. Something about the nerve area there, I guess. It seemed like I got twice as many shots as you did.

[Oban]

Vicodin/Darvocet + Valium is the only way to deal with wisdom teeth.

I really wish I had a picture of my wife after her wisdom teeth were extracted, she was the cutest chipmunk ever.

[Johny Cee]

Although.... I smacked face first on the street in a skateboard wipeout when I was 18 or so. Crack and chipped my four front teeth on the spot. Then drove myself to the dentist for emergency work after that. Somehow, it didn't exactly hurt then. Maybe because of shock?

Just means that you didn't break off the enamel as far as the root/nerves.  What sucks is to anchor the cap/replacement,  the dentist then has to drill into your tooth so the compound can stick to something.  That can be more painful then the actual injury.


Seriously though,  get the gas next time!  Who cares if they grab the wrong wisdom teeth?  If one set gets impacted, more then likely the other set is going to be a problem.

Yank em all!

[Margalis]

The first time they started drilling I could feel it - that wasn't so pleasant. Luckily I am good with that sort of thing - pain, needles, etc, I can deal with them pretty well. I think it's pretty cool to be able to watch, feel, etc. I've never had major surgery before but I did have some surgery on my hand and watched that too.

This is the first time I've had Vicodin, this is awesome. I think someone could chop my hand off and I'd be ok.

[Llava]

Ouch.

Seriously,  getting put to sleep is the only way to go.  When I had my wisdom teeth out,  they woke me up and I asked when they were going to start.... 

Almost the same for me.  I was smart enough to realize that something had happened, and it was probably the surgery, but I stupidly went to ask, "Is that it?" To which they responded, "DON'T TALK!  Yes."

[Arnold]

Ouch.

Seriously,  getting put to sleep is the only way to go.  When I had my wisdom teeth out,  they woke me up and I asked when they were going to start.... 

A good dentist is the way to go.  I thought my guy just had a Napoleon complex, but he was very good.  All the fears that people put in my head about getting wisdom teeth removed just didn't hold up.

[SimuKaren]

Well Margalis, this may not help your face to feel any better... but it's good for a chuckle.

My wisdom teeth were impacted, all four, so they had to be cut out. I knew it would not be a pleasant experience, so I got the gas. Oh yes, sweet sweet oblivion.

Until  I woke up.

Apparently about halfway through I opened my eyes and started freaking out. All I remember is there were people standing all around me holding scary pointy things, and I wanted them to go away. I was punching and slapping at the dentist and assistants - I know I hit one girl in the face. It took four of them to hold me down so they could give me the gas again.

A few months later, my lower right wisdom tooth began growing back in. I just sort of let it. I'm in no hurry to go back... and I'm sure they are in no hurry to see me again.

[schild]

All 4 of mine are impacted. But I've got gaps in my teeth. They're kinda pushing them together. Odds are, it'll never be an issue, but if I ever want them out "you can come back and get them out." OK. IN A RUSH TO DO THAT.

[Sky]

My new doc is great about novocaine. I left my last dentist for several reasons, one of which was mocking me for asking for more novocaine when he put a crown on. To me, it's not about being a tough guy, I have a high tolerance for pain. It's about not needing to invoke that tolerance when you can easily avoid it. He was comparing me to the guy in the next room who had an extraction without painkillers to a nurse after I told him I needed another shot. Hey, fuck you, buddy. New doc says your work sucked anyway.

For root canals, I go to a specialist who is the best in the world (imo). Top of the line gear, a surgeon's touch. Fast, and completely painless. I was scared about having a root canal and I never felt a thing. He called me that night to make sure I was ok. I didn't even take any ibuprofin like he asked me to, but he insisted when he called so I did. Didn't need to, it was an amazing experience.

Finding a good doc is so important.

[stray]

Apparently about halfway through I opened my eyes and started freaking out. All I remember is there were people standing all around me holding scary pointy things, and I wanted them to go away. I was punching and slapping at the dentist and assistants - I know I hit one girl in the face. It took four of them to hold me down so they could give me the gas again.

Supposedly, once I woke up after the ordeal, I said something bad in my half-asleep state. There was also this girl (dentist's assistant) that I was just starting to talk to/date there. She was the one who wheeled me out and took me home.

Apparently, my subconscious mind sabotaged that short-lived relationship. Never knew what the hell happened. All I know is that all the chicks who worked there cracked up when I tried to ask them.  


So, there are some downsides to being knocked out, I guess.

[bhodi]

Yep, you say some stupid stuff when you're on the gas.

[Engels]

Nitrous is the bomb. No way can I sit still for proceedures over 30 minutes without it. I insist on it every time, even if it costs of 40 bucks a pop (its not covered by my dental plan).

Yes, you say stupid shit in the chair, but then again, the dentist isn't hovering over your mouth in the hopes of gleening some wisdom from my teeth.

[Driakos]

While gas-high, I proposed to the dentist.  Then sang some songs to the rest of the room.  After a bit of unconsciousness, I woke up to the surgeon (this cute girl 5'3'' tops) with her leg on the arm rest of the chair, really pulling and working a tooth with some kind of clamp.  Like whole body into it, tug-o-war.  I felt like a machine, or a cadaver, and passed out again.  I only know about the proposal, and the serenading, from the staff dogging me after the operation, and again later when I went back for the followup.

[Murgos]

I have all my wisdom teeth.  Even though they are fine I still occasionally get a dentist asking if I would like them removed, just in case.

Eh?  No.

[stray]

While gas-high, I proposed to the dentist.  Then sang some songs to the rest of the room.  After a bit of unconsciousness, I woke up to the surgeon (this cute girl 5'3'' tops) with her leg on the arm rest of the chair, really pulling and working a tooth with some kind of clamp.  Like whole body into it, tug-o-war.  I felt like a machine, or a cadaver, and passed out again.  I only know about the proposal, and the serenading, from the staff dogging me after the operation, and again later when I went back for the followup.

Damn. That tops my story.

Mine had a more George Constanza feel to it. Just humiliating and frustrating. Yours sounds like something that happened to Kramer.

[Strazos]

Last time I was at the dentist a few years ago, they said that I had 2 of these things, but they weren't sure if surgery was ever going to be necessary.


I still don't notice them. I'll just totally ignore them until they hurt.

[Morat20]

My wisdom teeth came out easily, but my brother -- let us just say nature was not kind to his teeth. I don't think a single tooth ever grew in the right spot, and it is a testament to the skills of his dentist, orthodondist, and oral surgeon that his teeth look normal. His wisdom tooth extract was particularly difficult, and I will allow Neal Stephenson (via Cyrptonomicon) to tell the tale of a similarly difficult extraction. (My brother's wasn't that bad, but I find that passage very funny....so I'm posting it).

Disingenuously—as if wisdom teeth normally grew someplace completely different—they all pointed out that the wisdom teeth were buried deep, deep, deep in Randy’s head. The lowers were so far back in his jaw that removing them would practically break the jawbone in twain structurally; from there, one false move would send a surgical-steel demolition pick into his middle ear. The uppers were so deep in his skull that the roots were twined around the parts of his brain responsible for perceiving the color blue (on one side) and being able to suspend one’s disbelief in bad movies (on the other) and between these teeth and actual air, light and saliva lay many strata of skin, meat, cartilage, major nerve-cables, brain-feeding arteries, bulging caches of lymph nodes, girders and trusses of bone, rich marrow that was working just fine thank you, a few glands whose functions were unsettlingly poorly understood, and many of the other things that made Randy Randy, all of them definitely falling into the category of sleeping dogs.

Oral surgeons, it seemed, were not comfortable delving more than elbow-deep into a patient’s head. They had been living in big houses and driving to work in Mercedes-Benz sedans long before Randy had dragged his sorry ass into their offices with his horrifying X-ray and they had absolutely nothing to gain by even attempting to remove these—not so much wisdom teeth in the normal sense as apocalyptic portents from the Book of Revelations. The best way to remove these teeth was with a guillotine. None of these oral surgeons would even consider undertaking the extraction until Randy had signed a legal disclaimer too thick to staple, something that almost had to come in a three-ring binder, the general import of which was that one of the normal consequences of the procedure was for the patient’s head to end up floating in a jug of formaldehyde in a tourist trap just over the Mexican border. In this manner Randy wandered from one oral surgeon’s office to another for a few weeks, like a teratomic outcast roving across a post-nuclear waste land being driven out of one village after another by the brickbats of wretched, terrified peasants.
[...]
Among coders it was pretty obvious who was brilliant and who wasn’t, but how could you tell a brilliant oral surgeon apart from a merely excellent one? It gets you into deep epistemological shit. Each set of wisdom teeth could only be extracted once. You couldn’t have a hundred oral surgeons extract the same set of wisdom teeth and then compare the results scientifically. And yet it was obvious from watching the look on this dentist’s face that this one particular oral surgeon, this new guy, was brilliant. So later Randy sidled up to this dentist and allowed as how he might have a challenge—he might personally embody a challenge—that would put this ineffable quality of oral-surgery brilliance to some good use, and could he have the guy’s name please.

A few days later he was talking to this oral surgeon, who was indeed young and conspicuously bright and had more in common with other brilliant people Randy had known—mostly hackers—than he did with other oral surgeons. He drove a pickup truck and kept fresh copies of TURING magazine in his waiting room. He had a beard, and a staff of nurses and other female acolytes who were all permanently aflutter over his brilliantness and followed him around steering him away from large obstacles and reminding him to eat lunch. This guy did not blanch when he saw Randy’s Mercato-roentgeno-gram on his light box. He actually lifted his chin up off his hand and stood a little straighter and spake not for several minutes. His head moved minutely every so often as he animadverted on a different corner of the coordinate plane, and admired the exquisitely grotesque situation of each tooth—its paleolithic heft and its long gnarled roots trailing off into parts of his head never charted by anatomists.

When he finally turned to face Randy, he had this priestlike aura about him, a kind of holy ecstasy, a feeling of cosmic symmetry revealed, as if Randy’s jaw, and his brilliant oral-surgery brain, had been carved out by the architect of the Universe fifteen billion years ago specifically so that they could run into each other, here and now, in front of this light box. He did not say anything like, "Randy let me just show you how close the roots of this one tooth are to the bundle of nerves that distinguishes you from a marmoset," or "My schedule is incredibly full and I was thinking of going into the real estate business anyway," or "Just a second while I call my lawyer." He didn’t even say anything like, "Wow, those suckers are really in deep." The young brilliant oral surgeon just said, "Okay," stood there awkwardly for a few moments, and then walked out of the room in a display of social ineptness that totally cemented Randy’s faith in him. One of his minions eventually had Randy sign a legal disclaimer stipulating that it was perfectly all right if the oral surgeon decided to feed Randy’s entire body into a log chipper, but this, for once, seemed like just a formality and not the opening round in an inevitable Bleak House-like litigational saga.

And so finally the big day came, and Randy took care to enjoy his breakfast because he knew that, considering the nerve damage he was about to incur, this might be the last time in his life that he would be able to taste food, or even chew it. The oral surgeon’s minions all looked at Randy in awe when he actually walked in the door of their office, like My god he actually showed up! then flew reassuringly into action. Randy sat down in the chair and they gave him an injection and then the oral surgeon came in and asked him what, if anything, was the difference between Windows 95 and Windows NT. "This is one of these conversations the sole purpose of which is to make it obvious when I have lost consciousness, isn’t it?" Randy said. "Actually, there is a secondary purpose, which is that I am considering making the jump and wanted to get some of your thoughts about that," the oral surgeon said.

"Well," said Randy, "I have a lot more experience with UNIX than with NT, but from what I’ve seen, it appears that NT is really a decent enough operating system, and certainly more of a serious effort than Windows." He paused to draw breath and then noticed that suddenly everything was different. The oral surgeon and his minions were still there and occupying roughly the same positions in his field of vision as they had been when he started to utter this sentence, but now the oral surgeon’s glasses were askew and the lenses misted with blood, and his face was all sweaty, and his mask flecked with tiny bits of stuff that very much looked like it had come from pretty far down in Randy’s body, and the air in the room was murky with aerosolized bone, and his nurses were limp and haggard and looked like they could use makeovers, face-lifts, and weeks at the beach. Randy’s chest and lap, and the floor, were littered with bloody wads and hastily torn-open medical supply wrappers. The back of his head was sore from being battered against the head-rest by the recoil of the young brilliant oral surgeon’s cranial jack-hammer. When he tried to finish his sentence ("so if you’re willing to pay the premium I think the switch to NT would be very well advised") he noticed that his mouth was jammed full of something that prevented speech. The oral surgeon pulled his mask down off his face and scratched his sweat-soaked beard. He was staring not at Randy but at a point very far away. He heaved a big, slow sigh. His hands were shaking.

"What day is it?" Randy mumbled through cotton.

"As I told you before," the brilliant young oral surgeon said, "we charge for wisdom tooth extractions on a sliding scale, depending on the degree of difficulty." He paused for a moment, groping for words. "In your case I’m afraid that we will be charging you the maximum on all four." Then he got up and shambled out of the room, weighed down, Randy thought, not so much by the stress of his job as by the knowledge that no one was ever going to give him a Nobel prize for what he had just accomplished.

[Margalis]

My teeth weren't impacted, just the bottom one came in at a weird angle.

Today I feel pretty ok, although my face is still really swolen. It was odd, my cheek started swelling as soon as they injected the novacaine. I don't know what the heck they hit there that made that happen.

Mostly it was just pulling with pliers and such, they did use a drill to break up my bottom tooth a bit because they had to take it out in two parts but mostly it was just some yanking.

[WayAbvPar]

Damn, I keep forgetting how much I enjoy Stephenson's writing.

[Lantyssa]

Only two of my wisdom teeth came in, and I only knew about them from recent full x-rays where they're completely under the skin and growing forward.  (I've got a tiny mouth, so no room for them on my jaw.)  They aren't impacted on other teeth, so I'm not in a hurry to have them removed since it'll be a very difficult surgery.

[Murgos]

Damn, I keep forgetting how much I enjoy Stephenson's writing.

Stephenson is one of the few modern writers who you can tell really takes a joy in crafting each and every sentence.

[Ironwood]

Indeed.  He just loves to write too.  His Baroque cycle is much, much, much huger than it needs to be, but the reader enjoys just as he did.

[Llava]

Anyone in the Scottsdale area, my uncle's a dentist, and he's very good.  If you're stuck with a crappy one, I can give you his information.

[Lantyssa]

Thanks, but my dentist is awesome.  She gives novocain shots without any pain.  She's been in my mouth a dozen times and I could only barely feel the needle once.

She's also incredibly cute.

[Margalis]

One of the dental assistants I had recently was cute, but it's kind of hard to hit on someone when you've just been drooling on yourself.

[schild]

That's the best time.

[Morat20]

Thanks, but my dentist is awesome.  She gives novocain shots without any pain.  She's been in my mouth a dozen times and I could only barely feel the needle once.

She's also incredibly cute.

My dentist, who appears to be approximately 800 years old, is not cute. He is, however, quite talented and seems to take poor dental work as an insult. I've got two very old fillings he's been watching for three years because they're shoddy, but not bad enough to warrant replacing.

One of his hygenists, however, is quite attractive.

[Jimbo]

Wow you guys are pussies  :-D

I got all four of mine takin out with just local anesthetic, heck they had to drill the bottom ones (cut them up for better acess--didn't know that at the time, but later learned it when I worked in the dental clinic).  And just went home with an ice packs and motrin.  The worst part was having to stop somking for a week to let them heal.  Btw, don't smoke if you still have the open sockets, that can really lead to dry sockets.

Of course I'm one of those lucky bastards that has the mouth that doesn't get cavities, I do get quite a bit of tartar (calculus) build up, so the most I've had done is 4 teeth pulled, deep cleanings, and check ups.  Never had a cavity...wish my son had those genes passed onto him, as he has had a couple of cavities.

Oh if you do need massive dental stuff (I know some have the roots from hell, or need all their teeth yanked and are infected), conscious sedation is awesome, a little versed and morphine (of if the dentist thinks he is gonna be done quick etomidate and fentanly) and your in lala land threw the IV meds.  Of course that costs a lot more, so you could also do like one of my buddies and just get drunk and have someone drive him to the appointment.

[Lantyssa]

Wow you guys are pussies  :-D

Yes, yes I am.  I'll happily take my pain meds, thank you very much.