Wisdom Teeth Post-Removal Advice Needed (in Off-topic)

I got my wisdom teeth taken out today, and I'd like to know of anyone else on CB have had their wisdom teeth out, and what experiences they've had with it?

My own experience so far has been kind of scary. I got back from the dentist and did the whole "keep pressure with the gauze for 40 mins" then I changed it and took a nap sitting up because I was still a little loopy from the sedatives they'd given me during the removal. I woke up with blood dripping down my chin and all over my shirt... naturally, I was scared so I went back to the dentist in case maybe a stitch came out or something... but apparently I was fine. He said there was no major bleeding, the blod clots were good, and that I should just relax because what probably happened was while I was asleep I stopped pressure on the gums and they weren't done bleeding yet, and since I was sitting up the only place it could go was out my mouth due to the angle...

I feel much better now, after taking my percocet... but I was wondering what everyone else went through and if you have any suggestions on easy food to eat until the pain and swelling goes away.

Talk to y'all later. *presses frozen vegetable pack to her face since she has no ice cubes*

Key lime pie innards!

Um, I went straight home and slept for 2 days, then I was fine.

what are you kidding me OB? When i got mine removed it was 2 days before i deployed to Iraq! they gave me some Advil and told me to go back to work...after my face de-numbed i ate a cheeseburger for dinner and slept like a baby. never had any issues other than a bit of bleeding. it didn't hurt at all and it caused me no down time. maybe im lucky

You sure are lucky... it hurts to even drink WATER for me right now... I made tomato soup to eat thinking it'd be easy on me... and it hurts too... my stupid gums are too sore.

Grr.

i had mine taken out a few months ago lol. I didnt need any of the pain meds, but i couldnt eat much during the week :\ after that everything was pretty much normal :D

i had 4 removed at once, only one was impacted. i took the meds because... well BECAUSE!!
As far as food I went lots of liquids and pudding and jello and yogurt for the first several days to let it heal up as quick as possible.
just beware the straw! don't use em for a while. it's rare but the suction can cause problems. theres a term for it but i'm tired.
Chin up.. :)
and keep tooth picks on hand. when you're back to eating real food lil bits can get stuck in the vacant lots.... it's maddening!

UGH DRY SOCKET.

Straws are the devil.

Don't look in the mirror for a while too~ Unless you already have, and you're okay with looking like a chipmunk :P.

I ate lots of ice cream :D.

Eat pudding.

I have all my teeth.

Don't eat rice! You'll be cleaning rice out of the holes for weeks! Even after they heal you'll have holes there and lots of small food will get in! Did the dentist give you something to keep the holes in your gum clean?

I hated that bit!

Cold foods, Calynne. If you must have soup, make it gazpacho.

The dentist is right, don't worry about that blood. When I had mine out, I woke up after sleeping in the recliner to a mouth full of blood. Half dried. Quite possibly the nastiest taste/feeling I've ever had. But I only experienced it the very first time I slept, so it should stop fast. Best of luck on the soft foods!

Yes, the soup I ate was cold. I let it cool to room temperature before I even tried to eat it. I've been having sensitivitiy in my teeth from cavities I got recently, so I understand the pain involved in food that is too hot or too cold... right now everything I put in my mouth, including water, is room temperature.

And I was told about straws. I also can't drink soda for a week, and all that. I was given a two-page paper on what to not do while my gums are healing.

I also took another nap. It went a lot better. No waking up with blood, tho apparently I'm still having a little trouble with reflex swallowing. I woke up every 15 minutes or so just to swallow. Heheh. No, nothing wrong with it. I wasn't choking on it and it wasn't making me drool everywhere, so I'm good.

The only thing that bothers me now is I had the operation this morning at 0700 (finished at 0930) and it is now 6pm and I still can't feel my left cheek or my right jaw/tongue (the inner jaw. I can feel the right cheek)... the dentist said when I went back the first time that they'd given me novacaine and another drug that would make it numb longer, but I wonder why I can feel different parts of my face on either side xD

Any case, I'll keep everyone updated on the fun... and everyone keep giving those suggestions. I think I might end up having pudding for dinner. :)

Oh, and FYI I had all SIX, count em, SIX wisdom teeth removed. I feel my IQ has dropped significantly with the loss... :P

Have a good day everyone.

Calynne's corrections:
Cavities I got "filled" recently.

Yay! Even groggy and drugged up, I still make minimal mistakes! =P

I had mine yanked when I was 16. Basically, i just ate soft foods... ramen, soup, bread... nothing crunchy, ,and nothing that was going to get stuck in my gums. Some people are luckier than others in the pain department though. I've heard of people that were in excrutiating pain for weeks afterwards. The most intense pain for me lasted for about a day and a half. They gave my hydrocodiene for the pain. I popped them once when my novacaine wore off (no, i wasn't put to sleep for mine, i got the pleasure of watching them rip my teeth out one by one), and again iright before i went to bed. They hurt the next day or so, but i just kept with the soft foods, and i was ok after that. I started in on regular food about 3-4 days after the procedure.

I had toothache and went to the Dentist for an emergency appointment as it was the Friday before break-up and Christmas holiday.
He told me it was a "bad" wisdom tooth and it needed to be pulled.
I was aghast - "oh noes, a wisdom tooth", thought I.
"Relax", said the dentist it's no big deal and I'll do it right now...

I was scheduled to go out for the office Xmas lunch and booze up 3hrs later, but had to go ahead as the holidays were upon us. If it wasn't done then I'd have to suffer, for at the very least, the whole weekend.

My tooth was pulled, and I spat blood for the rest of the evening, but it didn't stop me going for both lunch and drinks afterwards.
Dentist told me that drinking alcohol wouldn't be a good idea - not because it would make me tipsy, (he's a Scottish dentist after all) but because it would stop the "wound" from clotting quickly. He was right...
My only compromises were to stay off the beer and only drink brandy that night, as well as having prawn cocktail (no chewing) followed by smoked salmon for Xmas lunch - not very festive :/

It was so long ago that I can't actually remember which wisdom tooth it was that I had removed and try as I might I can't get my tongue to tell me right now. I do know one thing though - it makes a huge difference if it's top or bottom. Dentist told me if it'd been "the other one", then it would have been a knock-out job before the removal.

I'm getting mine out later this month. I got sick of them hurting a whole lot every few months...

I got em all out and wasnt knocked out for it... maybe your condition was such that the tooth was difficult to get to? or heavily impacted...

My Dentist wanted to take out two of them, I said how about getting all 4 at once, cause I don't want to do this twice. He said ok. So I had all four of mine removed at once.

Went in Friday morning, went back to work on Monday. That weekend was a blur from the drugs. No real problems, Just sore for a couple of days. By Tuesday I was pretty much back to eating solids.

umm wisdom teeth soz never heard of it blame my asian back ground mind explaining!

/me was sound asleep for the whole thing. :D
and I woke up one of the happiest people in the neighborhood!

yeah i had mine taken out whilst i was asleep as well. it was fine just a bit of swelling but i was eating normally the next day. my sister on the other hand was eating take away an hour after she woke up, though she did only have 2 taken out.

Wisdom teeth are teeth that do not come in until you are 18-25 years old. They are just like molars, only since your mouth already is filled with teeth, they have no place to fit in and usually cause a lot of pain and suffering when they come in.

Usually people have four of them. Some people never develop them, some have one or two. Some, like me, develop more than the usual four.

They're usually taken out early in life (as soon as they develop) to prevent problems later on in life, since after the age of 25 the possibility of side effects and additional pain and medication time increases greatly.

I hope that explains it well. :)

I had mine removed before they actually came out when I was about 16 years old. They sliced open my gums and pulled them out.

After the operation, I was planning to go home to take a nap but instead I ran across some friends going to the amusement park and I went with them. I drank beer, ate hot dogs, screamed my lungs out in the rides, and... direly regretted doing it. I was 16 so at that time my brilliant reasoning was: "Ice and cold soup... bah! Ice is for wimps and soup is for old people! Where's the beer!".

When they pulled the stitches out a week later, my gums were all swollen and infected. It hurt like heck. But now it makes for a great story I can tell to everyone willing to listen to it. :)

Mmm... youth and stupidity. They go hand in hand, and as long as they don't KILL you... they make great stories.

Is that the old saying Caly, that which doesn't kill you only makes great stories? he he
On a side note... it was AFTER my 25th Birthday that I had my smarty teeth yanked.
sigh.

I got mine out when I was 19, all 4 at once. I remember 2 things -

I remember half opening my eyes during it, to hear the dentist say "we're having trouble with this last one. You might feel a little pressure, but it won't hurt."

He had a hammer and a small chisel...

I thought it was funny the way my jaw would jerk downward every time he smacked it - I was pretty looped.

That was at 1 in the afternoon. I went to work a 1 the following morning (12 hours later) and unloaded a 400+ piece supply shipment by myself. The truck driver told me I was insane, but I was becoming a legend among the drivers at his company.

I remember waking up the next day and feeling the pain for the first time...

...that was one of the dumbest things I've ever done.

:)

wow am i glad i didn't have mine taken till ... after 25...
when i was smart enough to use all prescription medication given to me...
and to stay home for about a week afterwards. :D

well i am 19 and havent got any tooth yank out..... sigh i can see pain coming my way!

Cal, I had direct experience with two people who had them removed, but have been fortunate that I have a huge mouth with plenty of room for the wisdom teeth (there's even room for a whole 'nother set back there, I'm just not that wise, apparently *smile*) All 32 teeth present and accounted for!

I remember the irrigation and keeping things clean being very important (at least in terms of their importance placed by the dentist. The pain period can range quite a bit between people, as well as the blood flow (as you discovered -- the amount can seem scary indeed...). I am sure it will be fine, though, and drugs are your friend in this case. *smile*

I will continue to be thankful for having a two-ounce mouth! Oh, one interesting note -- my wisdom teeth took approximately 10-15 years to fully come in for me -- they were sort of half-out for a loooong time. Also, I have only been to the dentist once in the past 15 years or so, so for all I know everything is going haywire in there (but I don't have any pain and things look OK, so I'm thinking things can't be too bad...)

Fortunately I still have all 4 of my wisdom teeth... :)

I threw up only once, and it was from the sedative. After that i was just knocked out the rest of the first day. Never once did i swell up or feel any pain. But i still do feel like i have holes behind my molars, but I've been to the dentist since then, and he didn't say anything.

Well, I still have three of the four left, and after searching "Wisdom tooth extraction" on YouTube I don't think I'll be rushing to get the others out.

Oh, and the gas they gave me, i remember counting down from 10 through 7, dont remember anything else until i was at home and in the lazy boy.

But my girlfriend at the time and my mom both told me that i was sitting i the passenger seat of our car, and i kept requesting to drive (As i was still unconscious from the gas), lol.

lmbo small!
They gassed me too and he said, ok, lay your head back and start counting back from 10. I started to ask another question and he stopped me and said (very nicely i think) no no, lay your head back NOW. So I did and i only remember thinking about he number 10. I'm not even sure if I actually said it out loud.

And Caly, of the 4 vacant lots they left in my mouth only 1 turned into a bucket of sorts and it doesn't even really collect anything anymore. More like a "dip" in the road.