Lessons learned...

So, I had my right lower wisdom tooth removed last Thursday. I was not looking forward to it one bit...as you would know from previous posts from before the wedding. I was supposed to have both of the lower wisdom teeth pulled before the wedding, but freaked out and chickened out. Well...one down now, and one to go. I guess it went alright...it was pretty scary for me, but I lived! LOL Did you know that your jaw can break from the pressure of pushing down on a tooth hard enough? I had no idea!!! The surgeon was on my right, and the assistant on my left. One round of Novocaine was administered (in about 4 shots total), as well as the goopy local anaesthesia. They let me sit there for about 10 minutes to get good and numb. The surgeon and the assistant came back into the room, asked if I was numb or tingly, and I told them that my tongue was numb, but my lip was kind of tingly. The surgeon said "Ok, well we're going to go ahead and get started. Just raise your left hand if you feel anything at all." OK!!! NO PROBLEM!!! She made the first cut and I raised my hand. She said "You felt that????" So obviously I said "Yes, not a whole lot, but I felt a little bit." That's when I found out it wasn't "going to get any better", so they gave me another round of Novocaine. I was good and numb then, and they got to work!

This is when it gets good...

Surgeon on my right...assistant on my left. Surgeon has all the good tools. The drill, the chisel, the plier things...the works. The assistant has the sucking thing and a napkin pretty much. Out comes the drill...yay! Then the chisel. Wait...what are you going to do with that??? The assistant puts her arm under my jaw and says "This is just to support your jaw so it doesn't break". What??? Then the surgeon says "You're going to feel a lot of pressure, and hear a crack..." What??? CRACK. Yeah, apparently that was my tooth breaking into a couple of pieces. Gross. Anyways...more drilling, lots of digging, and a LOT more pushing on my tooth with that stupid chisel. By this time I'm starting to get tingly again...which means the numbness is starting to wear off already. It's only been another 10 minutes, come on!!! Out come about 3 pieces of my tooth. At least that's all I saw. Who knows how much there really was that came out. They stitched me up, gave me my post-op directions, and sent me on my way. Pain killer, anti-infection drugs, and a steroid. The hubby and I headed back home to grab our stuff for the weekend, and were on our way to Kinde! The doc told me to call if I was still numb after 6 hours. Well...after 6 hours, I was asleep. Still numb, but asleep. So I called in the morning and left a message. Didn't hear back for the whole weekend, but kept up per doctors orders with the gauze, meds, and the hot/cold compress stuff. It actually wasn't TOO bad.

Yesterday, I got to work and decided I would call the office to see if I needed to do anything...seeing as I was STILL partially numb. The lady on the phone proceeded to tell me "You should have called that night. They needed to call in an emergency prescription for you." Well, the emergency prescription was the steroid...which I already had. She came back on the phone and said that they needed to see me...like...3 days ago to check on it. So now, I'm going BACK in on Thursday morning for who knows what. I'm thinking x-rays or something to see the extent of the nerve damage. Yay. Now, the partially numb part is this...there's a spot in the front of my jaw on the right side that is numb to the touch, but if I pinch, I can feel it...go figure!

When I was trying to take my meds before bed last night, I grabbed a couple of those yummy vanilla sandwich cookies and some water. I went to bite into one of them and felt this searing pain! I couldn't figure out what it was... I bit again. Searing pain again...what in the world??? Then I realized that I was biting a very small part of my lip! Yeah, NOTE to SELF....If your lip is half NUMB...DO NOT attempt to eat HARD sandwich cookies without using your FINGER to make sure your LIP is not between your TEETH AND THE COOKIE!!!!! OUCH!!!! LMBO!!!!
Just think...I get to do all of this over again in two weeks for the left side!!! Hopefully that side goes a little bit easier since the tooth is more accessible... :-(

I'll blog about the weekend activities in Kinde shortly...

~Peanut


"Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill."
-Johnny Carson