Anyone ever have a tooth pulled?

[jjreason]

My first wisdom tooth broke through the skin on the bottom right side when I was 13 or 14 years old. My dad had significant difficulties when he got his out - brought about by smoking too soon after the procedure - and I remembered how miserable he was so of course I was terrified of being told the tooth was going to have to come out. Luckily, the dentist told me it wasn't a big deal & that there was more than enough room in my mouth for it to live it's normal life beside my next-to-last molar.

Well flash forward to 2021 and my current dentist's office advises me the tooth needs a filling & isn't looking too shit hot. It might be better to remove it instead of try to fix it which would almost certainly be a stopgap measure until it eventually needed to come out. Fuck me.

So in all fairness the dental office was pretty good. The dentist I don't regularly see took 10 minutes to come visit & explain to me how it would go, had a look in my mouth & at the x-rays & advised it would be an easy to moderate extraction, no problem at all. I agreed a day or two later to have it done once I had thought about it a little bit.

Well after shitting my pants off & on for the last 2 weeks it finally came out on Thursday. They loaded me up with so much freezing that there was no pain at all, in fact they added bonus freezing when a filling I was getting at the same time started bugging me... I must have had nearly a dozen needles jabbed in & around the spot (which I didn't feel either thank to the awesome numbing spray). I'm lucky - it came out in one piece after some slow jiggling back & forth, no need to break the tooth & dig it out in chunks like I was worried might happen.

I felt pretty good until the freezing came out & then I needed to take some pain meds which they prescribed. Not terrible but not perfect either. It's now been over 48hrs & I'm just on the advil train now, trying to eat as close to normally as possible while keeping the food sequestered over on the left side of my mouth.

Long story short, if you're being a wuss & putting this off, I'd suggest you just get it done. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had envisioned it would be over the last 35 years.

[Tom Foolery]

I had my wisdom teeth out when I was like 19 or 20. So almost 30 years ago. It was pretty unmemorable, except I was working two jobs at the time and I didn’t wake up from the surgery for like several hours. The surgery was first thing in the morning and my mother came to get me, it was like 5:00 PM. The dentist/surgery team just let me sleep in the recovery room all day.

[Ran]

When I was a kid, I had to have a few baby teeth extracted, and I don't remember it being a big deal.

After my permanent top front teeth came in, the dentist found I had another set of front teeth coming in after them. I was about 11 or 12 at the time. They cut those teeth out and left a small scar on the roof of my mouth.

I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth out when I was 20. It was right after I joined the military. They knocked my ass out. I had to stay the night in the hospital since I was living in the dorm.

[jjreason]

The dentist/surgery team just let me sleep in the recovery room all day.

Jesus, I hope they checked on you a few times. ><

Ran, when I was getting interviewed & checked over for my job they told me to get them all pulled or my benefits would never cover it. Well I guess 21 years was enough to make them forget as my insurance said yes, at least in the first instance.

[Diabolical]

I had my bottom wisdom teeth out in 2005-2006ish.
It sucked because they broke apart and I have a very hard time keeping my mouth open for very long. It feels like jaw is on fire after a few minutes.
Afterwards, I don't remember any problems or much pain, other than normal soreness.

Thankfully the dentist said the top two were OK, and apparently/hopefully still are. I haven't had insurance in a while, so *fingers crossed*.

[Ran]

The dentist/surgery team just let me sleep in the recovery room all day.

Jesus, I hope they checked on you a few times. ><

Ran, when I was getting interviewed & checked over for my job they told me to get them all pulled or my benefits would never cover it. Well I guess 21 years was enough to make them forget as my insurance said yes, at least in the first instance.

The dentist on my first appointment in the Air Force was a Colonel. When he saw my x-rays, he got strangely excited about taking out my wisdom teeth. So it comes time for the appointment and they stick an IV in me. He goes to put me under and says, "Count backwards from 10, but you're not going to reach 0". I might have got to 7.

Now, like I said, I was still 20 and in really good shape. My normal resting heartrate at that time was in the mid-40s. During the surgery, my heartrate drops into the 30s and alarms start going off, which made me wake up. I think they hit me again with the anesthesia. I woke up briefly as they were pushing me in a wheelchair up to the hospital bed. I didn't sleep that well that night because they kept checking on me. At some point I bit the hell out of my cheek.

[anarky]

I only had three wisdom teeth fom. Two were extracted about 24 years ago. No biggie, until about 3-4 years ago, when suddenly a piece of bone or tooth that broke off and was healed over started coming out. It freaked me the fuck out until I realized what it was, and it came fully out a week or so later.

The third was so far back in my head that it was tough to clean properly, and suffered badly from my grinding my teeth in my sleep. It broke (only part of the surface, thankfully), and had to be pulled about two years ago.

Worst part of the whole process for me was the dentist wiggling a firmly embedded tooth back and forth. You don't exactly feel it, but you know it's happening. And when you do feel a slight pinch when it comes out, it's so far up that it feels like it's in your nostril.

[vynsane]

my wife had two wisdom teeth taken out, one on the top and one on the bottom of the opposite side (can't recall which was which). she was pretty out of it from the anesthesia for the day, and was uncomfortable for about a week, but it all went relatively well. she was so worried about any complications she heard could occur.

apparently i don't have wisdom teeth on top, only on the bottom, and the last time i was at the dentist he didn't seem to think they posed any problems at the time.

my father-in-law supposedly had six wisdom teeth extracted when he joined the air force. he joined to avoid the army draft during Vietnam and spent the last year and a half of the war in the California desert riding dirtbikes during the day and loading practice bombs on planes on the night shift.

[jjreason]

my father-in-law supposedly had six wisdom teeth extracted when he joined the air force. he joined to avoid the army draft during Vietnam and spent the last year and a half of the war in the California desert riding dirtbikes during the day and loading practice bombs on planes on the night shift.

Sounds like a pretty good go, minus the tooth pulling.