I had three wisdom teeth that were seriously impacted. Do you know how to tell when they're seriously impacted? When your very experienced surgeon says, "Wow. Those are DEEP! You're not going to make this easy on us are you?" He wanted to extract them asap so that my jaw would have a nice long time to heal and get strong for when he breaks it. (Not kidding.)
For the first surgery, he wanted to take out teeth #1 and #32 (on my right, your left). See that white line extending from the top of tooth #32? Fun Fact: THAT'S MY JAW. Despite that, I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. I mean, everyone gets their wisdom teeth out, right?
The Big Day
Dr. Kaban's scheduler, Debbie, is one of the few people who gets my inappropriate (and stressed induced) humor. She advised me not to eat after midnight and to bring an "adult escort". I told her that I'd see if Candy LaFontaine was available. She laughed. I love her for that.
I got an IV with Versed (vər-sěd) and something else that I forget. The first needle "hit a valve" and closed up. We went for the other arm and it hit a nerve. I felt it all the way up my arm. Yisch. It gave me the same feeling as when I look at MRSA infections on Google images. (I don't know why I do it, but I do.) Check me out (below) in all my glory. Thank God I didn't get hair in my mouth.
They put a sheet over me with a cut out for my mouth and I conked out pretty quickly. I did wake up once during the procedure. I remember one of the doctors dropping pliers or something in my mouth. (Seriously) When I groaned, he said, "Oh. Sorry." I mumbled the inflection for "That's ok." I also groggily remember the sound of a drill or something.
Afterward, I perked right awake. The nurse asked me if I could walk into the other room and I said, "Oh sure!" Ok. It was harder than I thought it was going to be, but overall the procedure seemed not that bad. One of my teeth had to be broken up to get it out, but one of them came out whole. It is creepy looking. It looks waxy or plastic. I'm pretty sure they got it from a novelty shop. They gave me gauze, ice packs, and prescriptions for Oxycodone and a mouth rinse – and my tooth in a baggy.
Recovery Day 1
I took two Oxycodone and laid on the couch. I could not eat. Now keep in mind that I had not eaten since dinner the night before and for me that's like a week of no food... basically. Later that afternoon, I started to have a slight fever and nausea. I decided I'd better eat – rice pudding, then a little chocolate pudding. Three, two, one: barf. Yeah. I barfed it up. Sure, I'm a step closer to skinny jeans, but I'd have preferred a little sustenance. Day 2
This morning, I could barely open my mouth far enough to brush and not well enough to insert a spoon all the way. My only option: a coffee ice cream Fribble from Friendly's blended with peanut butter sauce, of course. The best part was not barfing it up. Ah.
Overall
This sucks. My poor food-hole aches and is ready for some personal pan pizza. It blows my ever lovin' mind that I have to do this again for tooth #17. Scroll back up and have a look. It's completely embedded in my jaw... and SIDEWAYS. Yeah. That should be no big deal. You might want to buy stock in Friendly's and Jell-o pudding. What am I going to do when they break my jaw in four places? It could be worse. I'm excited to be a few steps further in the process.
