craigmcn

Hey, Hey! So, I’m home from the Oral Surgeon, short 1 wisdom tooth. Now I’m back to my full complement of 28 (sort of crooked, as most of you well know) teeth. I’ll give a quick synopsis of the original diagnosis, then a quick story about my morning.

The doctor said that the wisdom tooth was interfering with the nerve that runs along the bottom of my jaw, so any attempt to remove the tooth may result in damage to the nerve. The worst case scenario was that nerve would be permanently damaged, resulting in permanent numbness in my the lower-right part of my face and part of my tongue. He said the risk of this was about 5% to 7%, which I thought was reasonably low. Nope. The doctor said that he prefers to work in ranges of about 0.5% to 1%, so 5 to 7 was kind of high. He said that depending on what he finds in my mouth, 1) He may be able to just yank the tooth, like any other, 2) He may cut the top off the tooth and then work the bottom prt out carefully, or 3) He may cut the top off the tooth and leave the bottom in, under the gum. Sounds good to me. Except, if he leaves the bottom in, it may become infected. Depending how long it takes to discover the infection, it may be life-threatening. Excellent.

So, I decided to risk the permanent numbness, because when things come down to 5% to 7% chances, I’m usually in pretty good shape. I’m sure there’s about the same chance of me being hit by a car on my way to/from work, and that hasn’t happened … yet. I was told to make sure I had someone to pick me up after the surgery and stay with me the rest of the day and overnight. I figured because they were going to use an intravenous sedative and nitrous oxide (laughing gas, hee hee) and I’d be all f#$%ed up. So, I got my good buddy Gwildor to pick me up, get my prescriptions, blah blah blah.

I showed up at 8:30am. The assistant gave me some amoxicillin (penicillin) and some Scope to rinse my mouth, then sat me down in the chair and gassed me. The doctor seemed to poke and prod a bit, made some grinding/grating noise, then told me he was done. At 9:05am, I was sitting on the recovery couch, chatting with Gwildor feeling fantastic. By the time we got done with the paperwork, out of the office, and got a cab home, it was 10:00am.

I had left the house just before 8:00am, so within 2 hours I had gone, had surgery and was home. And I feel fine. A bit of a headache and my jaw’s still numb, but I’m fine. I’ve got a stock of pudding (tapioca and vanilla … I’m such a cracker!), some fruit cups, jello and instant mashed potatoes. I’ll wait ’til Monday to see whether I really feel like going back to work, I think I’ll call in sick and just loaf at home! HA HA!

If you’ve got any good Wisdom Tooth stories, please post a response, I’m sure they’ll be fun!