TTK Ciar's Journal: Some Dental Work Today .. Ow

Teeth Out!

I just got back from having my two back lower molars pulled out. The empty sockets are starting to get sore. Ow.

I refrained from general anasthetic so that I would be aware through the process. I was curious about the methods and procedure the doctor would use.

It started with a swab of local anasthetic around the backs of both sides of my lower jaw, which numbed the area slightly. They followed up with a huge, long needle of lidocaine deep into my jaw. He stuck me with it twice on each side of the jaw, then we waited for it to take effect. The numbness spread across my jaw and face, but was noticeably less intense on my right side, so when the left side got "fat" and the right side didn't, he stuck me on that side again with another dose of lidocaine. When the numbness spread a bit more, he went in.

The doctor gave me a rubber thing to bite down on with the left side of my jaw, and he went in to take out the right tooth. I thought it was odd that he started there; why not start with the more-numbed side left and let the numbness spread on the right side in the meantime? But nevermatter. It worked out fairly well.

He scraped and pulled at the outside of the first tooth, trying to see if it would come apart. Then the reached in with a grabby-thing and pulled a little, but released it almost immediately and pulled out a router-like thing instead (like a drill, but for cutting rather than drilling) and cut into it, but not all the way through it. Then he reached in with the grabby-thing again and pulled it around some more. This time I experienced an odd, familiar kind of pain, down in my jawbone. I recognized it from the times I broke a bone (in my face, my arm, and my feet, so far), that deep-down sick kind of pain. I made a noise because it was unexpected, but when he asked me if I was okay, I said yes (or "uh-hu" as the case may be) because despite being unexpected, it was not that much pain. I get worse hitting my thumb with a hammer. So he continued to pull at it, and then got his other hand in with a pen-like instrument to get under the tooth. Gradually he worked it out, quite pleased to have gotten it all out in one piece.

As he removed the rubber thing and replaced it on my jaw's right side, I reviewed what had just happened. It was unpleasant, but not all that painful. I psyched myself up for the other extraction, anticipating more of the same deep-down-jawbone pain. Often, if I anticipate a pain being worse than it's going to be, the subjective experience of it is much less intense than had I not. So again he cleaned it and pulled at it, then reached in with the grabby-thing, and stopped and went in with the router, but when he started cutting, I felt something very unexpected -- a sharp, intense shooting pain, down near the tooth, moving in a line perpendicular to my jaw. He saw my expression, pulled out, and asked me what was up. I did my best to mime what was going on, but the closest they could guess was that I was experiencing pain when he touched me with the router, which I confirmed. So he took a different kind of needle (short and relatively obtuse) and did something to that side of my mouth. He explained what he was doing to his assistant, but I didn't quite catch it. Some other kind of local anasthetic, I suppose. Whatever it was, it did the trick, and did it quickly. He extracted the tooth fairly quickly, without further pain of any kind, not even a hint of the jawbone pain.

I'd requested to keep the teeth, and he acquiesced, much to my surprise. They don't generally do that anymore, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. He had to sterilize them first, he explained, because it wasn't permitted to carry potentially infectious material out of the facility, but after a short bleach bath I got them in a little bag. Woot!

I'm icing my jaw now, and the painkiller is wearing off. I have 600mg ibuprofin tablets, but I don't anticipate they will do much. I'm going to be in considerable pain for a while -- several days at least, if not a couple of weeks. But as long as I don't get a "dry socket" (lose the bloodclot in the empty socket) it should heal up just fine in the next two weeks.

At least I got a lot of hard stuff done at work before this point .. I'll probably be short of temper and somewhat distracted for a while. Well, I'll see what I can do despite it.

-- TTK

I had all my wisdom teeth removed about a year ago

[spun]

No general, I don't think they do that for tooth removal. General anaesthetic is dangerous. No N2O either, darn it. At least they gave me something with codeine in it for after! Anyway, it stopped hurting in about 3-4 days if I remember, though it was tender for a couple weeks. Hope you feel better soon.

yay, it's over with at least

[he who meows]

When I had a wisdom tooth removed a couple months ago, They didn't use any general anaesthetic either, just a nice big shot of lidocaine. I didn't really feel anything, though it was a bit sore for a few days, it wasn't too bad. Anyhow, hope you feel better!

robp

teeth...

[j00suxx0rs]

Teeth belong in. I'm pretty sure of this.

getting better at least

[TTK Ciar]

Thanks for the well-wishes :-)

The last week's been miserable, but I finished my antibiotic regimen yesterday so I woke up without nausea this morning for the first time since the operation.

Unfortunately I can't take opiates (my body reacts badly to codeine and to hydrocodone) so the doctor just prescribed me high doses of ibuprofin.

At this point, I mostly miss crunchy food. Tofushakes were yummy for the first few days, but now I'd rather not eat anything at all :-P and dream of salad, nachos, toast