I grew two, all my myself!
Now I'm back to where I started.
Last week I got my wisdom teeth pulled. I spent at least two weeks leading up to the big day informally polling people (including strangers in some situations) about wisdom teeth. Did they have theirs? Had they already gotten theirs removed? Could they whistle?
This last question was really the most important because I love to whistle and I was going to be very upset if yanking a few teeth out of my mouth affected my ability to do so.
I heard people say they had no problem with getting their wisdom teeth removed.
I heard people used only novacaine.
I heard people got knocked out.
I heard horror stories of dry socket and accidental tongue slicings.
My oral surgeon had warned that wisdom tooth extraction comes with small but real possibility of permanent numbness in parts of my tongue and lip.
One person polled actually had this happen to them! Luckily for them it turned out to be, in fact, an eight month long temporary situation.
So the day came. I was expecting hours of pain and suffering.
Ok, not really. I had decided against getting knocked out for the procedure, assuming it couldn't possibly be worse than having a kidney stone, and instead chose to only have novacaine. So really what I was expecting was hours of having my mouth forced unnaturally agape while some strange man used tools I could not identify to steal my teeth.
I think I also expected the crunching, cracking noises of healthy teeth being maliciously obliterated.
What actually happened was this...
I got to the office at 10:30 for an 11:00 am appointment, having been unable to remember if they needed me there early for any reason. They did not. Also, it turned out, the surgeon was in an o.r. (or e.r., I can't remember) somewhere and was running late. He guessed he would probably not be too late, and was hoping to get there for 11, if not 11:30.
At 12:05 I was finally sitting in the big scary chair.
I got the novacaine shots.
The novacaine was given a few minutes to kick in.
The oral surgeon came in with a tool oddly reminiscent of the bezel pusher I have at work. He poked, pushed and wiggled my right wisdom tooth and grabbed something in my mouth with what looked like my angled tweezers from work.
I couldn't really see what was happening.
He repeated this process on my left wisdom tooth. Poke, poke, wiggle. Puuuush. He also had to briefly drill on that side. Poke, push, grab with tweezers.
He put some gauze in my mouth and told me to bite down before he stepped back and told me I was all set.
All set? The clock said 12:16.
That was it. I was all set.
No crunching or cracking.
90 minutes in the waiting room and less than 15 in the chair later, I officially had no wisdom teeth. I also had a mouth full of gauze and no feeling in my whole lower lip and jaw.
Stellar.
This numbness made it super easy to go ask to get my prescriptions filled at CVS right afterward. Ha. The guy at the check in computer took one listen to me and literally pointed at me and laughed, explaining he recognized that sound because he had had his wisdom teeth removed a few weeks earlier. I got my Tylenol with Codeine, Penicillin, and gross, blue Chlorohexadine swish and spit stuff, and made my way home.
My newly vacated gums would not stop bleeding for the next three hours, even after biting down on a dry tea bag so the tannins in the tea could help out with clotting. (Raw tea bags are, by the way, disgusting. Especially to a person who doesn't like tea.)
My gums eventually stopped bleeding.
Feeling in my lip and jaw eventually returned.
And that was it. I never got swollen. Not even a little bit. Or bruised. I had a little soreness a few days after the extraction, but that was it.
I couldn't believe it.
I have a few weeks ahead of me before the holes are fully closed, but after having eaten soup and apple sauce for the first week I am back on a regular diet.
And I'll have you know not only did I regain all of the feeling in my tongue and lip, I can also still whistle!
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