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This Thursday I'm getting all 4 wisdom teeth pulled. Sucks even moreso since the bottom 2 are impacted which basically means they are growing completely horizontally. For anyone that has ever seen an x-ray of their mouth or had teeth pulled, you know how long teeth really are. So to remove the impacted/horizontal teeth they've got to cut open the gums, use a drill to destroy the teeth, then pick the pieces out. As opposed to the top two which can just be yanked out.
Given I'm a bit of a pansy I'll probably opt for the laughing gas. It's been described to me as sort of putting you in a dreamy, dozing state where you don't really care about what is going on or you can just completely space out and not even know fully what is going on. Which is great for me, since I've been told getting those impacted teeth out is quite the... unpleasant experience.
Then I get to spend the next few days drugged up on painkillers, yay.
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United States1654 Posts
It's not actually that bad. They put me to sleep for my procedure and gave me some painkillers afterwards. I only had to take them once during my recuperation period, and that was it. The only downside is not being able to eat anything hard for a while, and sometimes you'll get food trapped inside the sockets and thus smelly breath.
Make sure you follow the procedures they give to you after the operation, because you don't want to get a dry socket. I heard those hurt like hell. Good luck with your operation!
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On February 19 2008 13:34 SigrUn wrote:It's not actually that bad. They put me to sleep for my procedure and gave me some painkillers afterwards. I only had to take them once during my recuperation period, and that was it. The only downside is not being able to eat anything hard for a while, and sometimes you'll get food trapped inside the sockets and thus smelly breath. Make sure you follow the procedures they give to you after the operation, because you don't want to get a dry socket. I heard those hurt like hell. Good luck with your operation! Put you to sleep? You mean via the IV sedative? That's an option for me as well and I was thinking about it.
What's a dry socket?
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United States22883 Posts
When you get the gas (NOT general anesthesia), as soon as it starts flowing you'll probably start hallucinating a bit but be too mellow to do anything, and you'll be asleep within like 10 seconds. At least that's how it was for me when I had surgery as a kid (children always get the gas.)
The downside is that it takes much longer for you to wake up and recover and the gas stays in your lungs for a long time, although they might have greatly improved those things in the last 12 years.
When I had mine pulled, I had the general (they put you to sleep with general as well, but you don't start seeing weird shit) and none of mine were impacted so it went smoothly. The whole procedure was finished by the time I woke up in like an hour. What you described sounds more like general anesthesia. They just gave me vicodin for the pain, not codeine or anything. The biggest bitch was having to take those giant amoxicillin pills.
I can never understand how people get addicted to vicodin. It's a strong pain killer, but that's all it ever did to me. It would be like getting addicted to Tylenol or Aleve.
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I have one of mine thats going to end up impacted if I dont do anything
the other 3 are fine though
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United States24483 Posts
I'm very lucky. I haven't needed any dental work, I've never (so far) had a cavity, and my wisdom teeth don't seem to need to be pulled :D
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@Jibba: Odd, are you sure we're talking about the same gas? I believe it was Nitrous Oxide they said they are giving me if I ask for it. If it puts me to sleep in 10 seconds, I'm all for it though. As for the pills, that shouldn't be a problem as I've never had trouble swallowing pills before.
@micronesia: I've never had any other dental work done aside from braces and they told me my wisdom teeth probably wouldn't need to be pulled since they weren't moving. Then they apparently starting moving a bit in the past few months and now I'm here. Hope you're luckier.
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I'm 20 right now and haven't had to had my wisdom teeth taken out. There's no pain in that area of my mouth whatsoever. I was reading about it on wikipedia and read that you should get them out even if they aren't a problem, because they can cause bad breath. So I might have to get them removed even if they aren't hurting me.
When do people get their wisdom teeth removed anyway? I've had friends who had them removed around 17-19.
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lol. It all sounds very painful.
For me, my bottom two wisdom teeth were under the gums, so they opened up the gums, bone, and drilled the tooth, breaking it into 4 pieces and yanking them out.
As terrible as that sounds, I was awake and didn't feel a thing. The worst part was feeling the anesthetic needle poking around in the beginning and stinging slightly.
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On February 19 2008 14:23 Blind wrote: I'm 20 right now and haven't had to had my wisdom teeth taken out. There's no pain in that area of my mouth whatsoever. I was reading about it on wikipedia and read that you should get them out even if they aren't a problem, because they can cause bad breath. So I might have to get them removed even if they aren't hurting me.
When do people get their wisdom teeth removed anyway? I've had friends who had them removed around 17-19. I'm 23. They told me if my teeth didn't move by age 25 or so I would have been home free.
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When I had my wisdom teeth removed, they gave me a local anaesthetic (my teeth were impacted as well). The problem isn't the extraction itself, the problem is the following days after. I dont' mean to scare you or anything because it isn't really that bad. I was awake during the whole thing and of course I was really nervous and shaky at first but after the first tooth was removed I got over it and watched through a mirror while the dentist cut and pulled my other teeth out. Of course, the amount of pain is all dependent on your surgeon.
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They drugged me and raped me in my sleep when I got em removed.
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Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
On February 19 2008 14:23 Blind wrote: I'm 20 right now and haven't had to had my wisdom teeth taken out. There's no pain in that area of my mouth whatsoever. I was reading about it on wikipedia and read that you should get them out even if they aren't a problem, because they can cause bad breath. So I might have to get them removed even if they aren't hurting me.
When do people get their wisdom teeth removed anyway? I've had friends who had them removed around 17-19. I read about this, too, since I'm 23 and if I want my wisdom teeth out, then I should get them out in the next two years (otherwise it's more of a problem to get them taken out, I believe).
From what I understand, the problem with your wisdom teeth is that your gums tend to press up against the sides/backs of those teeth, but they aren't actually attached any higher than the gumline along the rest of your teeth. What this means is that there's a tight space between your teeth and gums that's difficult for you to clean. As food remnants end up in there (and don't get cleared away), bacteria grows, causing bad breath in the best case, minor (but quite painful and annoying) infections and swelling in the moderate case, and serious jaw infections in the worst case. Even repeated instances of minor swelling can cause bone loss in the area, I've read, which in turn can cause problems for your other molars.
I've learned first hand that you do NOT want to get infections/swelling in those areas. Even minor ones are pretty annoying (e.g. it hurts every time you swallow), and it's a big relief once they've died down. In one not-so-minor instance, the swelling was so bad that parts of my cheek were swollen, and the pain was incredible: I wondered if I had a tooth infection. This was on a Sunday evening, too, so I couldn't get any help, and Extra Strength Tylenol merely reduced the pain from driving-me-insane to tolerable-but-still-the-worst-pain-I've-had-in-at-least-5-years. After vigourously cleaning away plaque around my wisdom tooth (with both toothbrush and fingernail), and soaking the area in very-salty water repeatedly, the swelling eventually died down after a couple of hours. Since then I take cleaning those areas much more seriously.
Another issue you'll probably have for a while (for a couple of years, it seems) is a flap of gum hugging the top of your emerging wisdom tooth. This flap develops the same problems as the gums hugging the sides of your teeth, except that so far, I've found the flaps to be much more prone to food particles getting stuck underneath them. (This has been a problem for my lower wisdom teeth only, by the way.)
So I guess those are the reasons to have your wisdom teeth removed even if they erupt just fine. In my case, I don't know what's up with my upper wisdom teeth (I think one or both have come out, but I haven't really counted...), but my two lower ones seem to be progressing upwards. Recently my left one all-but-lost its gum flap (thank God), while the right one is still half-covered by my gum (damnit -_-). I plan to try to keep them consistently clean, and have them removed only if that plan doesn't work out.
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meh i have a wisdom teeth growing in horizontally
: (
does it really matter?
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United States24483 Posts
On February 19 2008 14:01 Phyre wrote: @micronesia: I've never had any other dental work done aside from braces and they told me my wisdom teeth probably wouldn't need to be pulled since they weren't moving. Then they apparently starting moving a bit in the past few months and now I'm here. Hope you're luckier.
Well I'm 22 going on 23 and I haven't had a problem yet. In fact, I had a dental checkup today, and the dentist didn't find any problems. It should be safe to so I was luckier. I also was lucky that I didn't need braces (I was somewhat borderline but got the 'okay' to skip them).
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My operation went rather well in terms of not hurting afterwards (never had to take any pain meds, was 95% normal aside from eating in two days), but just last week I heard a friend of many friends of mine back at high school just died. She went to get her wisdom teeth taken out, and when she got gassed she just never woke up from it. =(
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United States24483 Posts
On February 19 2008 16:01 Myrmidon wrote: My operation went rather well in terms of not hurting afterwards (never had to take any pain meds, was 95% normal aside from eating in two days), but just last week I heard a friend of many friends of mine back at high school just died. She went to get her wisdom teeth taken out, and when she got gassed she just never woke up from it. =( I wonder if it was a problem with the procedure, or if she already had a pre-existing problem... but that's got to be shocking, regardless.
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I've had all my 4 wisdom teeths "excavated" out of my gums when I was 12 or something because I was about to put braces on and they would mess everything if not removed. All they gave me was topic anaesthesia and I can tell you it was quite the bitchy situation considering my young age. all it takes is some courage though, I guess it pays off since you don't want any of the more serious trouble that comes along if you don't remove them. man up and good luck :p
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uh, ive been to the dentist yesterday to fix some cavities, and i find out my wisdom teeth also grow horizontal, also still have 2 of my baby teeth pressing on my normal teeth and crowding them up, and i have to decide now will i take them out so the normal teeth might correct themselfs, all sounds nasty.
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i never got any wisdow teeth, which is pretty awesome
i just guess im higher up on the evolution chain
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