Having a Few Holes in Your Mouth

Wisdom Teeth Removal

I have a stressed relationship with my teeth to say the least. Due to sucking my thumb a few years too long I had my first retainer in third grade. From then on, I’ve always had some type of hardware in my mouth. To this day, I have a wire retainer on my bottom teeth. The one that was on top fell out after a year when I was eating cereal and because I have a hard relationship with my orthodontist I refused to go back and get it fixed. I have no problem with my actual dentist until he told me I had at least one wisdom tooth. Since my parents spent so much money on my teeth growing up it was not even a question of if I would get them removed but when. My dentist told me to wait until I could either see them poking through or I felt pain. Good news is I saw one poke through before I had any pain. The day before Thanksgiving I went in to have my first meeting with the oral surgeon. My dentist is a little old school. His x-ray machine is a few decades old. Going into the oral surgeon and having the x-ray taken as one that circles my head reminded me of the orthodontist. Here are the results.

Can you see how many I had? Three. I had three wisdom teeth. What a random number. As the surgeon said some people can have six to eight. The one on the left side was the one that had poked through. On my bottom front teeth you can see the wire retainer I have in my mouth.

Fast forward to the new year and it was time for my first ever surgery. I tend to avoid doctors and hospitals and anything medical to be honest. My dad decided to spend his time stressing me out about it and talking about his own wisdom tooth surgery. Where he had such a big mouth they let him keep two out of the four of them. It was best that my mom took me in for surgery, but she was lucky and never got wisdom teeth. I guess me having a weird number of wisdom teeth makes since. A dad with four and a mom with none.

For a person that stresses out about her teeth a lot and has bad history with teeth I think I was fairly calm the morning of the surgery. I actually slept the night before and was not shaking. Another thing that is important to note is I do not do well with needles. Like at all. The thought of them grosses me out. Which is why I’m a business major and never considered anything in health care. They started with laughing gas and knowing they were going to put an IV in my arm I took it upon myself to get as much laughing gas before that happened. I might have concerned the nurses with how deep of breaths I was taking. I felt well and my thoughts at that point were “your actually not going to know when they stick the needle in”. Until the doctor started talking to me and about the process of putting the needle in. I got stressed out at that point and wanted to ask him to stop talking and just do it, but I was unable to due to the laughing gas. Soon I was under and next thing I know the nurse is sitting me up and putting my glasses on me. Luckily the IV was already removed or I do not think I would have handled it well.

Recovery probably went very quickly but I was not willing to wait. That night I was craving a cheeseburger, but my parents were kind enough to grab me a bowl of Skyline Chili. (If you do not know what Skyline is educate yourself here. It is practically my life line.) Not too much swelling and a slight yellow bruise around day five. The picture on the right was from the first night. Now almost a month later there are no longer holes in my mouth and I managed to avoid dry sockets. Plus, I have had a fair few of cheeseburgers. I’m still not a fan of the oral surgeon or orthodontist, but now that my dentist will not be giving me bad news I am sure I can forgive him.