Hey
AK sorry to hear about it br0, but don't worry its not the end of the world. Apparently the military thinks that having your wisdom teeth is the end of the world, even if they weren't coming in impacted. So they decided to take out all 4 at once for me, and due to my incessant love of pepsi
(~), they decided to take out 3 others from my jaw. (7 total for you math in public guru's
)
I don't know if what I was under was considered 'Full Anesthesia' or not, someone else will probably be able to tell. They took me back and started my IV, and gave me the normal dose and had me count back from 10... I got to like 9.2 before I forgot who I was lol. After the initial
factor, I was there, but not there... It was kinda cool. I had my eyes closed and all and it seemed as if there were lights moving around over me and all, then I had this feeling like I was riding a roller coaster which made it alot easier for me to deal with the fact I could still 'feel' what was going on, i.e. I could feel them putting the baffles around my teeth before cracking them...
[INJECT]When they take out teeth, they do it 1 of 2 ways, they either try to remove them whole, or if not (
in my case) they crack them into 4 pieces and remove those. If you want, you can ask them to try and keep them whole so you can have them as trinkets for later if you want.[/INJECT]
But the surgery itself was fine, I woke up perhaps 3 hours later and they put the gauze in the sides of my upper and bottom lips. I was still loopy as all hell and on the car ride to the hotel I was staying at I was saying "
car..... nother car.... oh look a car... car... etc. etc."
When I got home I took the gauze out and luckily for me, there wasn't any pain. They gave me 2 bottles of medication, 1 bottle of Percocet for pain and 1 bottle of Bextra for swelling.
[INJECT] My surgery was in Feb of 2004, in 2005 they took Bextra off the shelves. As seen here...
Quote:
The manufacturer of Bextra has announced the voluntary withdrawal of the drug from the U.S. market. This withdrawal is due to safety concerns of an increased risk of cardiovascular events (including heart attack and stroke) in patients taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Bextra is a "COX-2" selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) and safety concerns of an increased risk of rare but serious skin reactions in patients taking Bextra
Read more: Bextra Information from Drugs.com
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[/INJECT]
But after I got home I tried the salt water solution that they perscribed me to use to flush my mouth out 1 time. NEVER AGAIN. It tasted like pure liquid nastyness. It wasn't needed to prevent death, so I did without. Also, back to the drugs, I only took 1 Bextra the first day to take down the swelling and never needed a pain pill. So
for that.
The biggest fear is getting whats known as 'Dry Socket'
Alveolar osteitis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which was described to me as a pain so severe, you'll wish you would just die. But will only set in in the first 5 days. So if after 5 days-1 week your not rolling over in pain, you'll be fine. Again for me, I never had any pain whatsoever. As for eating, the first day or so is rough, you want to move your jaw as little as possible cause of the swelling/tenderness. I stuck with a chicken noodle soup and juice and jello diet for the first 3 days, then I could eat more fufilling stuff like mashed potatoes. After the first week your good to eat whatever, you just really want to make sure little things like corn/rice/peas/etc. don't get in there, and if so, that you can flush them out.
It will feel weird at first having these holes in your mouth, unless they sew the area closed. They didn't for mine so it was interesting for a while, but over time, your gums will fill the space and I think after about 6 months they were closed permanently. Hopefully this will give you a little bit of an idea of what to expect, but for me, it was virtually painless and very smooth...
But I won't just give you the good without the bad to know all sides, another girl from my squadron was getting her's removed at the same time. Well her story wasn't so peachy... When they went in to give her the local anesthetic, they hit the primary nerve that comes down from the jaw and basically provides
all feeling from the left side of her face.
Well, she lost all feeling from the cheek down on the left side of her face and her lips. So kissing, useless, cheek slapping... useless. J/K But she had to drink from a straw out of the right side because if she did anything out of the left side, it would dribble out. Not fun. She said it took about 6 months before she
started to regain feeling, then she went to another base and didn't talk to her much after that so who knows if she regained 100% feeling or not... Hopefully so...
