Wisdom Tooth Chronicles: Part II

As I was mentioning in an earlier article, the accounts people relay concerning their wisdom teeth almost always seem to have focus on pain, a bad recovery process, or fear going into the chair. I wanted to right the ship in sharing my story that really had almost zero negative aspects other than my own neglect of one wisdom tooth which began to rot. And as you should all agree, this was solely on my shoulders and had nothing to do with the actual extraction process.

So, once I got around to calling my dentist to square away a date and time for my wisdom teeth removal, I felt quite relieved to know that I was FINALLY penciled in to someone’s schedule to take care of this abomination of a tooth.

And then the day came. And it was time.

I’m the type of person that loves to research anything and everything, so I had done my due diligence in poking around the internet for details on the extraction process itself. I asked my dentist everything I possibly could once I had arrived, from things like how it would be removed, what my options with local numbing and even anesthesia were, and how long the recovery process would take. More than anything, I wanted to get those questions out of the way before having my teeth removed because I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t be able to speak afterwards.

That’s one thing that kicked in a lot sooner than I would have ever guessed during the process, though. The numbing. I chose not to go with anesthesia and instead received local and acute numbing around the area and then in the teeth’s roots themselves.

You see, I wasn’t aware that I would have the numbing administered and then have to wait 15 to 20 minutes on my own before the process began. And that was probably the most uncomfortable part of the whole thing to me: having a very numb mouth that felt swollen while I had to wait.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe very well since everything felt fat and swollen and numb. And I felt like anytime I wanted to swallow my saliva, I had a very hard time doing so because everything was clunky. While I knew to stay calm and that it was all a part of the process, I really would emphasize that this was the most unpleasant part of it all that I didn’t really have any warning about.