Got a couple wisdom teeth extracted

[Torn Mind]

Mashed potatoes and gravy.

I did come across them as suggested foods. However, I avoid potatoes due to the starch content. Since I have sustained some perio damage, a lot of material can get crammed in the gaps between my teeth. Usually, I'd use a waterpik if I do eat starches but that's an inconvenience for at least the first two days.

Chinese steamed eggs with no extras are a perfect fit though. High protein, no sugar, and savory.

Chinese steamed eggs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The pic in the wiki article is not a good representation. It's just a whole bowl of gelatinous egg material.

 

[digiram]

I had 4 removed which had impacted one of my molars. This was many years ago. I was in pain for months before getting them removed. Terrible. I didn’t get sedated either. Figure the pain couldn’t be any worse. Lol. Anyhow, the numbing shots they gave me worked really well. Didn’t feel any pain at all during extraction. I could feel and hear the teeth cracking and such but no pain. Was really weird.

 

[pcgeek11]

I'll bet it would be fun to fill that waterpik with cold water and shoot it into those socket holes.

 

[pcgeek11]

I was assigned to an aircraft carrier after basic. The first days are making visits to sick bay, dental, personnel, etc.

Got my teeth cleaned and given an appointment card for an appointment in a week or so. Asked what this was for, they told me they were taking out my wisdom teeth. I said no thanks and never went back.

That was 54 years ago... and I still have my wisdom teeth, and they have never given me any problems.

On Submarines you are required to have wisdon teeth removed.

With no doctor or dentist onboard Wisdom teeth problems are not what they want to have issues with. Besides they do not want to abort a patrol mission just for a wisdom tooth infection.

I don't see the point of a surface ship with a Doctor(s)/Dentist onboard. I'm just assuming an Aircraft Carrier has Doctors and Dentist.

 

[sdifox]

Yeah, my bottom two teeth were impacted, nearly perpendicular to the other teeth, hence the power tool that I guess your dentist didn't have. They broke them into little bits because they couldn't get them out.

I think there wasn't enough clearance to use powertool.

 

[snoopy7548]

I had all four out at the same time when I was in high school, under general anesthesia. I remember waking up just as they were yanking out the last one.

OP, be sure to completely clean out the sockets after eating. That part always freaked me out - four deep holes in my gums where food could get trapped.

 

[Muse]

Deep cleanings are usually done by a periodontist.

If you have deep pockets ( greater than 3 mm ) in your gums I would advise you to get Laser Surgery by a periodontist. I did several years ago and everything has been great since. You can't floss and clean lower than about 3 mm.

I can't remember hearing about deep cleanings until a month ago. That was the day I met my new dentist. My former dentist of ~40 years retired a few weeks before anybody on earth knew about Covid-19, lucky for him I guess. I sensed that we were in for it and didn't go indoors with anybody until I was vaxxed. Did check out a local Nextdoor thread from someone soliciting ideas for a dentist locally, and made a note to call the the DDS who got the raves, the hands-down winner. Finally, after 2 Modernas and the booster I was ready.

His operation is damn impressive. All woman staff, just like my former dentist, but more sophisticated, seemingly 3-4 times the staff. He scheduled me for 2 deep cleanings (2 hours each), but not with a periodontist, evidently with his own staff who specialize in deep cleanings. He fixed a cavity 3 weeks later but didn't do the filling, he turned that over to his "filling specialist." First time I'd ever heard of that, all my fillings before were done by the dentist.

I suppose I should ask about the laser surgery and periodontist. He did send me to a very well regarded local endodontist (who did my one and only root canal 12 years ago) to evaluate and treat my tooth resorption issue on tooth #11. That guy really knows what he's doing, I'm seeing him today to remove the stitches.

Never had a deep cleaning before. What's that like?

 

[Muse]

Two on the right yanked out this session.

One day ~1992, my dentist (only one from ~1982, maybe earlier, until Dec. 2019) said to me "let me know when you want to get those wisdom teeth removed." I was, "huh?" He explained that as you age those 4 wisdom teeth become more trouble than they're worth. They are hard to keep clean, particularly if you are older too, they don't help enough with mastication to warrant keeping. If they develop problems, they aren't easy to extract when you are older. Plus, when you are older you don't heal as readily. Therefore, it's best to get rid of them even if they aren't problematical before you get too old.

I acquiesced and IIRC he sent me to a specialist, probably in his own building and I had two removed at a time, i.e. in two sessions.

My recollection is it was no big deal, not much pain, the recovery wasn't difficult.

Weaklings. I was on the chair for 7.5 hrs and the doc was only able to get half of a wizdom teeth put. The other three came out in like the first thirty min.

This is why you want to get them extracted before you get too old. They get harder to remove as you age.

 

[Muse]

Takes much more than one or two doses of fentanyl to get addicted...but fucking fuck...I can see why people get hooked...that shit was GOOOOOOD!

I had that experience IIRC in a dental office with valium once.

I got all 4 out at the same time.
Then they gave me percocet.
Life was wonderful.

It's one reason I work out. There's the health, of course, the overall boost to my lifestyle, but the endorphins after working out make everything OK, the details don't matter.

Yeah, my bottom two teeth were impacted, nearly perpendicular to the other teeth, hence the power tool that I guess your dentist didn't have. They broke them into little bits because they couldn't get them out.

Damn! What happened to people who had impacted wisdom teeth before modern dentistry?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gjwna

Dentistry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Torn Mind]

Seems like I can totally skip the Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and Tylenol+Hydrocondone they prescribed me. Woke up with just the swelling and minor achy feeling still but no real pain to speak of. Might take one dose of the Ibuprofen+Tylenol together as they recommend(they say regardless of pain) just in case.

I will and am taking the amoxcillin and using the chlorhexidine wash.

 

[Torn Mind]

Damn! What happened to people who had impacted wisdom teeth before modern dentistry?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gjwna

Dentistry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If the people were in a culture eating more "local" diets, it would have been likely they were eating foods that stimulated and worked the gums as children, thus promoting the creation of room for wisdom teeth to erupt fully.

Why We Have So Many Problems with Our Teeth

Our choppers are crowded, crooked and riddled with cavities. It hasn’t always been this way

www.scientificamerican.com

The famed Australian orthodontist “Tick” Begg recognized this mismatch back in the 1920s. He found that Aboriginal peoples living traditional lifestyles wore their teeth down more than his dental patients of European ancestry did. They also had perfect dental arches—their front teeth were straight, and their wisdom teeth were fully erupted and functioning. Begg reasoned that nature expects wear between adjacent teeth to reduce space requirements in the mouth.

....
Begg was right about the mismatch between teeth and jaws, but he got the details wrong. According to anthropologist Rob Corruccini of Southern Illinois University, the key change was not to the abrasive environment but to the stress environment, meaning the mechanical stresses jaws experience during eating. And the teeth were not too big—the jaw was too small.

Remarkably, Charles Darwin made the connection between stress and jaw size in his 1871 book The Descent of Man. But Corruccini was among the first to offer definitive evidence. He had just started teaching at Southern Illinois when a student from nearby rural Kentucky told him that in his community seniors were raised on hard-to-chew foods, whereas their children and grandchildren had more refined, processed diets. Follow-up study showed that older residents had better bites, despite almost no professional dental care, than younger ones did. Corruccini explained the difference in terms of dietary consistency. Thus, the dental differences were not genetic but environmental. Corruccini went on to find many other examples, including the Pima of Arizona before and after they had access to store-bought foods and rural peoples near Chandigarh, India, who had diets of coarse millet and tough vegetables as compared with urban dwellers, who ate soft bread and mashed lentils.

Corruccini reasoned that tooth size is preprogrammed to fit a jaw subjected during growth to levels of mechanical stress in line with a natural childhood diet. Subsequently, when the jaw does not get the needed stimulation during development, the teeth become crowded at the front end and impacted in the rear. He confirmed this hypothesis with experimental work on monkeys evincing that those fed softer diets had smaller jaws and impacted teeth.

And this is old timey Kentucky, not some exotic "primitive" race. Weston A. Price did do his investigation back then as well.

 

[nakedfrog]

My recollection is it was no big deal, not much pain, the recovery wasn't difficult.
This is why you want to get them extracted before you get too old. They get harder to remove as you age.

It seems to vary, I bled for 24 hours afterwards, but other than that, I was totally fine.
My oldest daughter had a swollen face for days, and didn't have a pleasant time of it. Got dry socket too.

 

[Torn Mind]

It's not pretty but it is tasty chicken egg.

 

[Muse]

Seems like I can totally skip the Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and Tylenol+Hydrocondone they prescribed me. Woke up with just the swelling and minor achy feeling still but no real pain to speak of. Might take one dose of the Ibuprofen+Tylenol together as they recommend(they say regardless of pain) just in case.

I will and am taking the amoxcillin and using the chlorhexidine wash.

I had oral surgery 3 days ago, they gave me 10 ibuprofen tabs but I didn't take any. I almost never take any pain meds. The pain was like a pizza burn, annoying but you know it will go away so you ignore it. The mouth generally heals real quick, I guess there's real good blood flow. I didn't bleed during the procedure (a big deal, he said, a drop of blood in the wrong place and he would have had to "start all over") because he included vaso-restrictors in his injection regimen.

 

[Muse]

It seems to vary, I bled for 24 hours afterwards, but other than that, I was totally fine.
My oldest daughter had a swollen face for days, and didn't have a pleasant time of it. Got dry socket too.

I think a lot probably depends on the person's anatomy. In my case I think the wisdom teeth had come in in place, there was no issue AFAIK. I think many people have theirs extracted when they run into trouble, then extraction might be far tougher, just guessing based on a few things I've seen here and there.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I still have 3 of my wisdom teeth. Specialist looked at them and said I'm better off leaving them. I thought the jaw pain I had was because of the wisdom teeth but turns out I clench my jaw at night. Still trying to figure out how to make that stop. They put me on cpap since in the whole process of diagnosing this issue I got diagnosed with sleep apnea, which sucks. It does seem to help a bit, but has not eliminated it completely.

I'm actually starting to wonder if the wisdom tooth themselves are actually somehow what's causing the clenching. I may actually ask the dentist for a second opinion next time I have an appointment. They would not be able to put me asleep for it though, so because of that they may be reluctant. Apparently it's really dangerous to go under general if you have sleep apnea, especially for dental work since they can't put a mask on you.

As a side note, since they don't do cleanings anymore I wonder if we're going to start seeing more cavities in the population in the next decade or so. Even if you brush your teeth well, nothing is as good as a proper cleaning in a dental office. They still do the scaling though, so I guess that probably still helps a lot.

 

[WelshBloke]

Takes much more than one or two doses of fentanyl to get addicted...but fucking fuck...I can see why people get hooked...that shit was GOOOOOOD!

I don't get a lot out of opiates. When I broke my ribs they gave me a fuck ton of liquid morphine and most of it is still in my bathroom cabinet 4 months later.

I even tried making whisky and oramorph cocktails!

 

[WelshBloke]

I thought the jaw pain I had was because of the wisdom teeth but turns out I clench my jaw at night. Still trying to figure out how to make that stop.

I mean you do come across as a pretty tense individual that worries a lot about the weirdest things!

 

[pmv]

Had to have all 4 out when I was 16 (or maybe 17?). I could do with them now, as a couple of the non-wisdom ones (the foolish teeth?) have started to fail on me.

Interesting how we have apparently evolved to have smaller mouths, so they won't fit any more, but they still try and come through.

 

[pmv]

I still have 3 of my wisdom teeth. Specialist looked at them and said I'm better off leaving them. I thought the jaw pain I had was because of the wisdom teeth but turns out I clench my jaw at night. Still trying to figure out how to make that stop. They put me on cpap since in the whole process of diagnosing this issue I got diagnosed with sleep apnea, which sucks. It does seem to help a bit, but has not eliminated it completely.

I'm actually starting to wonder if the wisdom tooth themselves are actually somehow what's causing the clenching. I may actually ask the dentist for a second opinion next time I have an appointment. They would not be able to put me asleep for it though, so because of that they may be reluctant. Apparently it's really dangerous to go under general if you have sleep apnea, especially for dental work since they can't put a mask on you.

As a side note, since they don't do cleanings anymore I wonder if we're going to start seeing more cavities in the population in the next decade or so. Even if you brush your teeth well, nothing is as good as a proper cleaning in a dental office. They still do the scaling though, so I guess that probably still helps a lot.

I had an issue with grinding my teeth at night, at one point. They gave me a soft plastic gumshield sort-of-thing. I remember using it and dreaming that I was eating fruit gums, but they were mysteriously and frustratingly tasteless.

 

[BudAshes]

Had to have all 4 out when I was 16 (or maybe 17?). I could do with them now, as a couple of the non-wisdom ones (the foolish teeth?) have started to fail on me.

Interesting how we have apparently evolved to have smaller mouths, so they won't fit any more, but they still try and come through.

It was probably less smaller mouths and more that we lose less teeth nowadays.

 

[pmv]

It was probably less smaller mouths and more that we lose less teeth nowadays.

I'm sure I read a long time ago somewhere that it's because our mouths have gotten smaller.

Googing it now, sources seem to say that both reasons are involved (our jaws got smaller as our brains got bigger, but also our diet and dental hygene means we lose fewer teeth).

 

[Red Squirrel]

I had an issue with grinding my teeth at night, at one point. They gave me a soft plastic gumshield sort-of-thing. I remember using it and dreaming that I was eating fruit gums, but they were mysteriously and frustratingly tasteless.

I was on the mouth guard for a while, could not stand the thing, at one point it also started to make it worse. Gave up on it and that's when I ended up going for sleep study.

I heard botox can help cure the clenching, but it only lasts like 6 months, so I don't know if I want to do that as it could have long term effects like weakening bones. I may try it once though, because if I can stop the clenching temporarily it may give a chance for TMJ to heal, and maybe after that point it will stop.

Though best direction is to probably look at the wisdom teeth route. They might be aggravating something in my sleep that I don't realize.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm sure I read a long time ago somewhere that it's because our mouths have gotten smaller.

Googing it now, sources seem to say that both reasons are involved (our jaws got smaller as our brains got bigger, but also our diet and dental hygene means we lose fewer teeth).

We can blame fast food joints for that, they keep shrinking the size of meals so we are evolving with smaller mouths!

 

[Captante]

I'll settle on a lot of cream cheese and some steamed eggs(cooled). Can't take yogurt because with amoxicillin, lactose is not kind with me since I am lactose intolerant.

Per WebMD:

Products made from cream — like ice cream, cream cheese, custard, or butter — should be avoided due to the high levels of lactose. In addition to some kinds of cheeses, some people with lactose intolerance may be able to eat yogurt in moderation, as the lactose has been partly broken down.


The reason you should avoid yogurt with some antibiotics is that live cultures and the resulting high acid can interfere with their mechanism of function. It has zero to do with lactose.