June 9, 2011

And that's the tooth...

Greetings readers!

For those of you who don't follow me on facebook/twitter, here's the scoop: yesterday I ventured from one end of the TTC to the other, meeting Adam in Mississauga. From there, we went to the Dentist's office, and I had what I consider to be my first ever major surgery.

I had 2 wisdom teeth removed.

To expand, I had one hour of deep, below-the-gum-line de-scaling (cleaning), followed by the removal of the upper and lower wisdom teeth on my right side. Our dentist only does one side at a time, first because freezing the whole mouth at once can make it hard to swallow, and second because if they only do one side, you can still eat with the other. The teeth on the right side came out first because there was a little skin flap over the bottom one that could cause infection, and there was a pretty huge cavity in it (seriously, I saw it after, it was icky). The left side has a cavity too, but it's not as big.

Not to be a negative-nelly or anything, but the whole thing was pretty sucky. People tell you that it "isn't that bad" and that "it doesn't even really hurt", and it doesn't hurt when they come out, it's the after-part that's an issue. Now, I really don't want to scare anyone. I"m just being honest about MY EXPERIENCE; Your mileage may vary. There are lots of ways a wisdom tooth extraction can be done: some people get knocked out and have all 4 yanked at once, some people never got all 4 to begin with, and some people have MUCH higher tolerance for pain than I.

I was terrified leading up to if, and I think that was a pretty strong reaction. There was no need to be terrified... leery? Yeah, that would have been better. There was a bit of a complication, in that the bottom wisdom tooth was "hooked" (so the root had a bit of a hook on the end, which caused a bit of damage on the way out), and the roots on the top one were fused on one side. There was also a bit of a problem mid-way through. I had a panic attack.

So, because of my history with needles (me+needles tends to = passing out), they gave me this FANTASTIC stuff called Nitrous Oxide. You may know it as laughing gas. It was pretty great... it basically makes you drunk. My problem was, I kept my eyes closed the whole time, including during the sutures. Thing was, because I was frozen, my brain decided it would be awesome to make me think that I was choking on the thread he was using to stitch me up. It was horrifying... But I lived through it.

The big problem started when the freezing wore off. OMG, I don't remember the last time I felt that kind of pain. Maybe when I accidentally slammed my hand in the door of mom's car? Maybe when I had mono and the doc told me I had strep and gave me painkillers I couldn't swallow? Either way... Last night, the only reason I slept was because of the T3's I'd been perscribed. They didn't actually touch the pain, Ice was the only thing that did that. Still is, actually.

Here's the important part... If you're reading this thinking 'holy crap, what's wrong with you? I got all 4 out at once and I've had hangnails that hurt more... and you've got 3 tattoos!', you're probably right. I'm sure normally that's the case... Adam's didn't seem to bother him nearly this much; he was eating grilled cheeses and pizza the next day, and I can barely chew. Here's the thing I wasn't expecting...

It's that time of the month.

TMI? Maybe, but it explains a lot. EVERYTHING hurts.

Work at 6am tomorrow is going to be awesome. Yeah... I probably should have booked that off...

So, I go back on the 22nd to get the Left hand wisdom teeth out, also top and bottom. I'll also be getting some other kind of de-scaling/cleaning that day. I've been told by Adam, and the dentist as well, that the second time isn't quite as bad. It'd better not be...

I don't think I could take it.

1 comment:

fineskylark said...

I hear it gets way worse as you get older. Mat had his done last summer and he had a really bad time of it; I had mine done when I was 19 or 20 and it wasn't too bad (aside from panic attacks about the anesthesia).

The cynical part of me thinks that your dentist does it as two separate procedures because he makes more money that way, but I hope it does make it easier on you in the long run.