Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Wisdom Teeth Removal...Not So Bad

I couldn't put it off any longer, I needed my wisdom teeth to come out. It should have been done almost four years ago, but life got in the way. Life continued to get in the way so I procrastinated further. But with my migraines becoming more and more frequent and us finally having amazingly good dental coverage, I took the plunge.

I was referred to an oral surgeon again and we discussed how we could go about doing things. I had originally wanted to be put completely and totally out. But we decided on "twilight sedation" instead. Basically they would load me up with such fun drugs as propofal(yes the same drug that killed Micheal Jackson) and fentanyl. We got ridiculous lucky and we were able to book the surgery for a Monday when I would not be in school, but honey would not be at work, but the baby would be at daycare.

I was surprisingly not very nervous the night before and the morning of. Perhaps I was so incredibly annoyed about the fact that I was starving to death having not eaten anything that I didn't notice. Even walking into the room I was fairly calm. At this point I was more concerned about the fact that I have a severe allergy to acetaminophen and I am codeine resistant. I laid down on the table and I that was when it hit me. I then met the anesthetist who was kind enough to give me Ativan while we discussed the fact that I was one of two people he had ever met with such a rare allergy to acetaminophen. Due to a scheduling mixup, my surgeon was not in yet. I got bumped. Good thing for the Ativan ;) I asked for my iPhone and played Bejeweled while I waited. Nearly an hour went by and I started twitching again. I don't do lateness and my anxiety went back up. But the last thing I remember was putting my iPhone back into my purse and getting moved back into the other room.

Twilight sedation? It's awesome! I did panic a bit when I woke up as I had giant gauze in my mouth taking up all the space and seeing as I was just getting over a cold, I still couldn't breath very well through my nose. The recovery area nurse or whatever she was, was a rather unpleasant woman who grumbled about the fact that I requested my oxygen back for a bit until she could remove the large gauze. She was also annoyed with me that my biggest concern was when I could eat again. It was nearly 2pm and it had been almost 14 hours since I had anything to eat. She was also less than helpful in calling my husband. I had to text him because she refused to call him.

I walked out under my own power and we went to go get me something to eat. There was a Booster Juice nearby which was so good. We went to Costco to try to fill my prescriptions. They told me that it would be a two hour wait! We thought they were insane. So we went to a grocery store closer to home. A 20 minute wait there. So he brought me home and then went back to pick it up. This was probably the worst of it. The freezing had let go. While removing the top two had been a total breeze, the bottom one(I was only born with three wisdom teeth) was slightly impacted, so they needed to do an incision to pull it, was now really starting to hurt.

Honey got home with my pain killers, one of which I was quite skeptical about, seeing as I had only heard about it in passing and had never had it. Being allergic to acetaminophen, it severely limits your choices for pain killers. Most of your well known drugs, your Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, they are all derivatives of acetaminophen. And as I mentioned earlier, I am one of approximately 10% of the population that the enzyme to convert codeines, so I may as well take a sugar pill. This means that there are a small handful of pain killers that I can actually take. What they gave me worked almost instantly. Pain was gone, it was wonderful.

It's now been two days since my teeth were pulled and I'm doing quite well. The top two, if I didn't know any better, I would never have guessed that I just had teeth pulled. The bottom one, the pain comes and goes and there has been some minor bleeding. There is also a bit of swelling in the area but nothing super noticeable. I'm also very pleased with the fact that despite me being a very fair person, there is no bruising at all.

So as it turns out, I was pretty much worried and freaking out for nothing. I have a bachelorette to go to on Friday and of course Christmas dinners. I can go to these and enjoy them and not look like someone beat me up or like a chipmunk. Maybe this will learn me to panic less?

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