Wisdom Teeth

[Rosbjerg]

My medical history is similarly fortunate.  The worst I can complain about is a minor procedure I underwent when I was about 12 to remove some soft-tissue splinters (arrow fletching) from my left index finger.  (I was target shooting with a kiddie-size fiberglass bow and some rather ragged wooden arrows.)

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The worst I've experienced was in march last year.. when I had a skiing accident.. I was in the hospital for a week, but initially they thought I wouldn't be able to walk for about 6 months.. But after 3 days (2 of them in ICU) I needed a cigarette so bad I just got up and walked out to have a smoke - and then I was emitted 4 days later.. showed them! ^_^

 

otherwise the only illness I've had that required medication was an ear infection..

no broken bones (or even a serious strain) - no bad teeth - no serious diesease *knocks on wood*

 

I think it's because of my years of living alone (and unhealthy) while still doing alot of sports.. strong body, strong immune system! ^_^

[alanschu]

I requested an IV to knock me out.

[taks]

never a cavity here, either. with the sole exception of my wisdom teeth, every visit i've made to a hospital (for my own health) has been self inflicted through acts of sheer stupidity (read: drunkenness) or sports related (soccer is hard on ankels and knees).

 

taks

[Pidesco]

I've been hit by a truck.

 

I broke its windshield and a headlight. All I needed was 5 stitches and a few bandages. :D

[LoneWolf16]

Lucky jerks with your lack of cavities. My brushing habits are suspect, but apparently sufficient for nice breath, just not for keeping from getting holes in them.

 

I'm up to four, one filled just recently and another was a root canal. I spent an entire night lying in bed with the absolute worst pain ever in my mouth. Honestly felt like something was ripping into my tooth with a jackhammer. An exposed nerve isn't fun, by any stretch of the imagination.

 

That was my first encounter with 800mg Ibuprofens.

 

They, like ze goggles, did nothing.

 

Next day, two injections of numb juice, and like a half hour of drooling, then the sucker was done. :D

 

Strangely, it's the teeth that are exactly opposite of one another on either side of my mouth. Wisdom teeth, on the other hand, have enough room to grow, and apparently wont be a concern in my life.

Edited January 3, 2007 by LoneWolf16

[Azure79]

All this talk about wisdom teeth is scaring me. I'm 27. When do wisdom teeth start becoming a pain?

 

Can it be avoided? :'(

[kumquatq3]

I'm 23, mine grew in no problem, so it's not all glom and doom

[kumquatq3]

I've been hit by a truck.

 

I broke its windshield and a headlight. All I needed was 5 stitches and a few bandages. :D

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Yea, again, real sorry about that one. You get a few drinks in me and I'm all over the road. :">

[taks]

All this talk about wisdom teeth is scaring me. I'm 27. When do wisdom teeth start becoming a pain?

 

Can it be avoided? :'(

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i've heard of people getting their wisdom teeth in when they are in their 30s. they only become a pain if they are misaligned or your jaw is too small. not everyone has them, either. sort of a fluke of evolution not unlike the (presumably) useless appendix.

 

taks

[taks]

oh, and i don't think there is any orthodontist that would advocate "avoiding" wisdom teeth issues over flat out yanking them.

 

taks

[Pidesco]

I've been hit by a truck.

 

I broke its windshield and a headlight. All I needed was 5 stitches and a few bandages. :D

 

Yea, again, real sorry about that one. You get a few drinks in me and I'm all over the road. :">

 

 

You probably also had problems with seeing the road over the steering wheel, as you were about 9 at the time.

Edited January 3, 2007 by Pidesco

[Deraldin]

Lucky jerks with your lack of cavities. My brushing habits are suspect, but apparently sufficient for nice breath, just not for keeping from getting holes in them.

 

I'm up to four, one filled just recently and another was a root canal. I spent an entire night lying in bed with the absolute worst pain ever in my mouth. Honestly felt like something was ripping into my tooth with a jackhammer. An exposed nerve isn't fun, by any stretch of the imagination.

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My teeth are apparently surprisingly susceptible to cavities. I have at least a dozen that have needed fixing. One of my my molars (3rd from the back, 2nd not counting the wisdom tooth) is about 1/3rd filling. I haven't had any cavities in a few years now fortunately enough, although apparently it's only because everything that was eating away at my teeth seems to have moved on to eating away at my gums.

 

And so far my Wisdom teeth seem to be coming in perfectly. No problems with any of them so far, except for the one side where I keep biting my cheek since I'm not used to having the wisdom teeth back there.

 

My wisdom teeth seem to be one of the few things that has turned out okay. My front teeth came in all weird. None of them pushed the other tooth out. They all came in behind the baby tooth then pushed forward after I yanked the loose tooth out. I still have a massive overbite. Fortunately it's not so bad that it requires fixing. My front two bottom teeth fit perfectly in behind the front two top teeth. The molars in my top and bottom jaws were not lined up at first. My top jaw was actually narrower than my lower jaw. Thankfully my adult teeth came in properly and lined up the right way.

[Shadowstrider]

Surgery horror stories... hrm...

 

I have never had a broken bone until recently (two months ago). I've had my clavicle somehow tear ligaments and muscles as it popped out of place. A few years after that I blew out my MCL in a high school wrestling match. Both were pretty painful, but not bad.

 

Oddly the worst surgery I've had was december 22nd last year. I broke my toe playing soccer and didn't know it, I'd been walking around on it for 2 months, it also caused my toenail to become ingrown. I had no idea the toe was broken, the only reason I went to the doctor was I thought the toenail was becoming infected. The doc then tells me that my toe is broken and the toenail needs to come out. That sucked big time, he had to reset my toe and pull the nail in one go. He said it wouldn't be much pain... he was a liar and a witch.

[Azure79]

Surgery horror stories... hrm...

 

I have never had a broken bone until recently (two months ago).  I've had my clavicle somehow tear ligaments and muscles as it popped out of place.  A few years after that I blew out my MCL in a high school wrestling match.  Both were pretty painful, but not bad.

 

Oddly the worst surgery I've had was december 22nd last year.  I broke my toe playing soccer and didn't know it, I'd been walking around on it for 2 months, it also caused my toenail to become ingrown.  I had no idea the toe was broken, the only reason I went to the doctor was I thought the toenail was becoming infected.  The doc then tells me that my toe is broken and the toenail needs to come out.  That sucked big time, he had to reset my toe and pull the nail in one go.  He said it wouldn't be much pain... he was a liar and a witch.

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Damn...that must have hurt.

[Krookie]

I've been hit by a truck.

 

I broke its windshield and a headlight. All I needed was 5 stitches and a few bandages. :D

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Yeah but you're Superman, Pide.

 

We're talking about regular people.

[Rosbjerg]

That was my first encounter with 800mg Ibuprofens.

 

They, like ze goggles, did nothing.

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no they are only mild sedatives - although the heavy hitters in that catagory - you won't feel the worst headache with those babies.. but anything above that is only slightly affected.. I was on them as well for awhile.. but like you they didn't have much of an effect on me either.. morphine on the other hand.. phew!

[metadigital]

Lucky jerks with your lack of cavities. My brushing habits are suspect, but apparently sufficient for nice breath, just not for keeping from getting holes in them.

 

I'm up to four, one filled just recently and another was a root canal. I spent an entire night lying in bed with the absolute worst pain ever in my mouth. Honestly felt like something was ripping into my tooth with a jackhammer. An exposed nerve isn't fun, by any stretch of the imagination.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My teeth are apparently surprisingly susceptible to cavities. I have at least a dozen that have needed fixing. One of my my molars (3rd from the back, 2nd not counting the wisdom tooth) is about 1/3rd filling. I haven't had any cavities in a few years now fortunately enough, although apparently it's only because everything that was eating away at my teeth seems to have moved on to eating away at my gums.

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I've sat through someone else getting a root canal (many times, actually: I could almost do one myself, certainly assist with it: (British teeth). Nasty stuff.

 

My mother took flouride tablets when she was pregnant with my elder brother and me, which is probably why we have much, much better teeth than my eldest siblings.

[Deraldin]

All you people with your pathetic horror stories. My dad has them all beat. Three kidney stones within 18 months. Not small ones either.

[alanschu]

Pfft, it all pales in comparison to the father that runs his paralyzed son in marathons and triathalons because his son made a comment that he didn't feel paralyzed when they were doing it.

[tarna]

Not much in the way of horror stories as much as examples of stupidity on my part. :joy:

 

Christmas eve several years ago I decided to get some work done on a machine when no one would be bothering me. I tear apart a large fan at a hotel and proceed to rebuild it. I'm almost done reassembling it. Cool! Life is good! I'm tightening the main pully ( @ 1 metre ) and my wrench slips and I clock myself in the nuts. Frigging OUCH! After I have a cigarette and get the colour back in my face, I decide that I'll be smarter than my dull wrench and position myself in the opposite direction and pull the wrench toward me instead of pushing it away from me. I'm working in a tight spot with no light so I have a small flashlight in my mouth as I work. Idiot! Guess what? The wrench slips again. The momentum of my arm brings the wrench upward and then downward onto that very same flashlight. Now I'm running my tongue across my teeth and figuring this is not a good thing as I'm spitting blood on the floor. I have grease up to my elbows. I finish putting the fan back together, find a place to wash my hands and look into a mirror. Jesus. My three front teeth were so buck-toothed that I could bite the back side of a frigging apple. Pushing my teeth back into my face, I have my wife call our dentist's emergency number and ask if I should be seen now or if it could wait. He laughed and said he would come in a do some temporary work until we could figure out what was needed after the holidays. I killed three front teeth by cutting the nerves when I blew them out. I also got to listen to the SOB sing "All I Want For Christmas Is My Three Front Teeth". Bastard! :D I go home and listen to my wife describe a dinner of steak, corn on the cob, apples, that sort of thing. "Give me my GD porridge and shut up woman!" My kids were greatly amused and I'm still hearing about it from everyone involved. This was in 1999.

 

The Elder Gods had it right when they ate their young!

 

Just before New Years a few years ago I went in for a hernia. I knew I had one and figured it was a good time to get it taken care of. After a rather intimate exam that I would have normally expected dinner and a movie to be involved ( as well as a woman! ), the good Herr Doktor told me that I had a double. Dandy! I go in for surgery a couple of days later and when I wake up the wife is waiving an 8 x 10 glossy under my nose showing that I had a triple. Cool, leave me alone and let me enjoy what's left of my anestesia buzz woman! Go home and what do they have as a movie for me? "Pirates of the Caribean"! I hate Johnny Depp. His acting still sucks. The percodan, assisted by a few rum and cokes made the movie tolerable.

[mr insomniac]

I was given valium when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I was 20, it was the first time I'd taken or been given drugs of that sort, so I wasn't too sure what to expect. As the operation progressed, I could feel a certain pressure on my jaw, and it began to hurt. My mouth was full, the surgeon was working away, and I tried to tell him, "it's sore!"

 

Because he couldn't fully understand me, he thought I was counting my wisdom teeth, and he just laughed and said, "yes, there are four!"

 

Three times we repeated this little exchange. Because I was stoned, I began to find it kinda funny, and also because I was stoned, it never occured to me to say, "no you idiot! It hurts!"

 

And anyway, it turned out I had five wisdom teeth; two on the lower right side. The surgeon showed me the extra tooth. It was all abcessed and would have impacted if I'd waited any longer to have the surgery done.

 

Some months later, I saw an ad in the classifieds, asking that anyone, who had surgery performed by this particular doctor within the previous two years, to call a certain phone number. The first fear to pop into my mind was AIDS or hepatitis, or something like that, so I called the number. Turned out this particular doctor had botched an operation, and damaged that big nerve in someone's jaw, and they were looking for others who had similar bad experiences. I guess I was lucky, because it only took a week or so until I was pretty much back to normal after the operation.

[Pop]

All you people with your pathetic horror stories. My dad has them all beat. Three kidney stones within 18 months. Not small ones either.

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I had 4 within 12. 6 cans of coke a day will do that to you. Good times. I've got a story for it, too.

 

Actually, the aftermath of the surgery was much, much worse than the actual malady itself. Kidney stones cause the most excruciating pain you'll ever experience (if you never bear children without painkillers, but then I hear that those who have experienced both find the childbirth less painful) but it only hurts for about a half an hour (that's still pretty bad, mind you) before it goes away completely.

 

See, there's this little tube that goes from your kidneys to your bladder that the stone goes through. Even if a stone is the size of a grain of sand (normal) passing it is akin to forcing a whole lemon through a straw. It eventually gets through, but when it's going through, it's like you're being stabbed from the inside out. Actually peeing it out is no trouble. You have to strain your urine lest you unwittingly lose the stone (if you need your stones to be analyzed) It's easy to tell when a stone gets passed because you start getting blood and some clots in your urine, because that stone went through your ureter like a razor blade.

 

Pity the man with jack stones. I can't even begin to comprehend it. I got the smooth ones.

 

But at some point, I stopped passing the stones and they got "stuck" somewhere, and they had to take me into surgery. I went in believing it to be pretty minor and ready to bear some pain in order to prevent greater pain. But when I got out of the OR, I felt much worse pain than I ever did with my kidney stones. I can't even remember most of it, but it was just as bad as the kidney stone pain, but drawn out pretty consistently for over 12 hours. By the end of it I was delirious.

 

But oh, that wasn't the worst part (and this is where it gets interesting!) See, when they perform kidney stone surgery they knock you out and then use this snake-claw thing that goes up your urethra. This is a pretty delicate process (thank God), but with the anesthesia and the fact that it's going up your ****ing urethra, the urethra and the bladder are in danger of swelling shut. So they put a stint in. It's a long, flexible plastic tube that goes from the meatus to the bladder, to keep it open and running. I remember it being the width of a coffee stirrer, but it seemed a lot bigger in me.

 

I mean, yeah, you pissed blood when you passed your stones, but it doesn't prepare you for the sheer terror of this. Oh no. You go to the bathroom in PAIN, standing for hours, fist clenched on whatever is near, and wait for the plumbing to kick in. Cause the stint forces open that opening to the bladder, so any time it attempts to close or flex it starts to spasm, and holy christ, you would not believe how much it KILLS. You feel like pissing 14 hours a day, and when you manage it, it hurts like a sonofabitch, and what comes out is not urine. It's thick, red, clotted blood, which will stop up the urethra, and cause your bladder to spasm more, and you wish God would just up and kill you, or at least castrate you, because Holy God the pain. You cry, hard, because it feels like somebody's taking a scalpel to your insides and your outsides, and the local anesthetic they use for the surgery makes you start to furiously itch from the inside, from the urethra to the bladder to the kidneys, and it ****s up your digestive system as well. You're in your own bed in your own house and you feel like you've stepped on a landmine.

 

I was pretty lucky, too, since my mom was a nurse and she had a stash of powerful narcotics that she put me on, heavily, for days. It didn't help much, though. That kind of pain gets you when you're unconscious.

 

BUT that wasn't the best part. After a few weeks had past and I had aged a few years I went into the doctor to get the stint removed. My doctor's a funny guy. I'm sitting there with my pants down and he's checking out the situation and he asks me how I'm feeling, and I say "Alr-" and he pulls on the stint string like I'm a lawnmower. Feeling that, and seeing it, was just about the most unpleasant thing I've ever experienced. See, to keep the thing from slipping out during the waterworks or sleep or whatever, the ends curl up like a pig's tail, and that's why he pulled so hard, to straighten out the thing so it would slip out. This, of course, causes my bladder to have a grand mal seizure, and the stint comes out along with a lot of blood. And then it was over, and I went home a man.

 

And that's my story! :D Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sedate myself after having to recall all that.

[Laozi]

I've heard having an impacted bowel hurts alot. For the last two years I've sat next to an emergency room nurse in my spanish class and she has the craziest stories. The worse involves a man who wanted to experience birth pains and a balloon and paper mache

Edited January 4, 2007 by Laozi

[alanschu]

I was given valium when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I was 20, it was the first time I'd taken or been given drugs of that sort, so I wasn't too sure what to expect. As the operation progressed, I could feel a certain pressure on my jaw, and it began to hurt. My mouth was full, the surgeon was working away, and I tried to tell him, "it's sore!"

 

Because he couldn't fully understand me, he thought I was counting my wisdom teeth, and he just laughed and said, "yes, there are four!"

 

Three times we repeated this little exchange. Because I was stoned, I began to find it kinda funny, and also because I was stoned, it never occured to me to say, "no you idiot! It hurts!"

 

And anyway, it turned out I had five wisdom teeth; two on the lower right side. The surgeon showed me the extra tooth. It was all abcessed and would have impacted if I'd waited any longer to have the surgery done.

 

Some months later, I saw an ad in the classifieds, asking that anyone, who had surgery performed by this particular doctor within the previous two years, to call a certain phone number. The first fear to pop into my mind was AIDS or hepatitis, or something like that, so I called the number. Turned out this particular doctor had botched an operation, and damaged that big nerve in someone's jaw, and they were looking for others who had similar bad experiences. I guess I was lucky, because it only took a week or so until I was pretty much back to normal after the operation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

He gave you Valium? I thought that it was more of a sedative than an anasthetic. I wouldn't be surprised if you felt pain.

 

 

As for the nerve damage, I was told straight up that there was a possibility that the nerve would be damaged, and that given how impacted my bottom teeth were, there was an increased (meaning still small, just not as small) chance of it being damaged. I actually did have extended numbness on the right half of my chin, and it lasted for about a month. It took about a year before it didn't have dulled sensation compared to the left side of my chin (everything from the lip down pretty much) and it felt "normal." I don't necessarily believe in suing surgeons based on misfortunes like that, as long as it's not due to gross negligence. It was wierd only feeling with the left half of my bottom lip for a while though. Putting a glass in my mouth was an odd sensation. Could only feel it on one side. Fortunately, it got better!

[Pop]

I've heard having an impacted bowel hurts alot. For the last two years I've sat next to an emergency room nurse in my spanish class and she has the craziest stories. The worse involves a man who wanted to experience birth pains and a balloon and paper mache

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Oh yeah, my mom (I've already mentioned she's a nurse by trade) had to deal with those things all the time, especially since she went through her residency in a mental institution, where apparently such things are very common. To this day, she forbids me to describe anything powerful as "having an impact", because it reminds her of the impacted bowels she had to treat.