Anybody had a wisdom tooth out later in life?

[scottyuk]

I had one out in my late thirties. Just had the local injection.

He put a clamp around the tooth and then heaved left and right. I remember hearing the two roots break ... and so did the dentist. I had chronic jaw ache as it took him ages to pull it out. When it did come out he was sweating and said "you made me work for that one". I did have a sore chest where he was leaning/kneeling on it!

I decided some whisky would be good that evening and a couple of preemptive Anadin and that was it. A few days being careful with brushing and also trying to avoid getting food in the hole and that was it.

[gremlin]

Infection. Double dose antibiotics that really make me nauseous.

Still bloody painful but hopefully getting sorted.

[McSatan]

I got fed up with the constant expensive battle with my teeth, fillings, root canals, discomfort, everything, so I had the whole bottom lot out a few weeks ago, to be replaced with half a dozen titanium rawl plug things drilled and set into my lower jaw. On top of which now sits a permanent bridge of a full set of shiny new teeth. Well, semi-permanent, I'm going back in January to have the final permanent set put in once the bone/titanium has fused completely. Also to have the process repeated on the top ones. it took about five hours and I don't know if it hurt or not because I was ripped to the tits on intravenous valium. I do remember they used a brilliant little ratchet spanner thing to screw the teeth to the rawl plugs, and them refusing to let me take it home with me.

[gremlin]

Curious indeed....

The 'wound' seems fine and not infected as far as I can tell, and I went to see the doctor Tuesday gone who said it 'looked beautiful'. The pain had subsided then but has come back now, but in an upper tooth. And here's the weird thing, I have a subconscious habit of nibbling the skin around my thumbs nails. Only I can't now. It's almost as if my teeth are slightly out of alignment.
I wonder if the procedure and/or swelling (there's still a small, hard lump I can feel through my cheek) has pushed the back teeth out of alignment and now the top and bottom molars are no longer coming together snugly, but rather at a proud point and that's what's causing the pain in the upper tooth as it's pushed in by that fraction of a millimetre.

I'll give it a week or so and it may be a case of just having that 'bite test' and the dentist smoothing things out a smidgen with the drill, if natural erosion doesn't do it first....

[G.P]

I got fed up with the constant expensive battle with my teeth, fillings, root canals, discomfort, everything, so I had the whole bottom lot out a few weeks ago, to be replaced with half a dozen titanium rawl plug things drilled and set into my lower jaw. On top of which now sits a permanent bridge of a full set of shiny new teeth. Well, semi-permanent, I'm going back in January to have the final permanent set put in once the bone/titanium has fused completely. Also to have the process repeated on the top ones. it took about five hours and I don't know if it hurt or not because I was ripped to the tits on intravenous valium. I do remember they used a brilliant little ratchet spanner thing to screw the teeth to the rawl plugs, and them refusing to let me take it home with me.

I did the same, my teeth were OK but gums were suffering from 30 years of smoking. Couldn't see the sense of a single implant here and bridge there so had the whole lot out and titanium implants put in.
One of the lower implants didn't take properly so that has put the process back by 6 months to give the 2nd implant to take and the jaw bone to grow around it.
I'm getting bored of temp dentures but looking forward to the full Jurgen Klopp look!

[Saga Lout]

ISTR my dentist saying something about discomfort in the upper jaw/cheek being due to the swelling pressing on a nerve (in the bottom jaw) and it will subside.
Its a bit of a giveaway if its infected (mine was) your breath smells like a badgers arse
You'll probably find that when all the swelling subsides things will settle back in to their usual places and your teeth will fit again

I won't ask.



OK, yes I will. How do you know what a badger's arse smells like?

[cheb]

Easy now with questions like that.

[moth]

I got fed up with the constant expensive battle with my teeth, fillings, root canals, discomfort, everything, so I had the whole bottom lot out a few weeks ago, to be replaced with half a dozen titanium rawl plug things drilled and set into my lower jaw. On top of which now sits a permanent bridge of a full set of shiny new teeth. Well, semi-permanent, I'm going back in January to have the final permanent set put in once the bone/titanium has fused completely. Also to have the process repeated on the top ones. it took about five hours and I don't know if it hurt or not because I was ripped to the tits on intravenous valium. I do remember they used a brilliant little ratchet spanner thing to screw the teeth to the rawl plugs, and them refusing to let me take it home with me.

How much did all that cost?

[McSatan]

I got fed up with the constant expensive battle with my teeth, fillings, root canals, discomfort, everything, so I had the whole bottom lot out a few weeks ago, to be replaced with half a dozen titanium rawl plug things drilled and set into my lower jaw. On top of which now sits a permanent bridge of a full set of shiny new teeth. Well, semi-permanent, I'm going back in January to have the final permanent set put in once the bone/titanium has fused completely. Also to have the process repeated on the top ones. it took about five hours and I don't know if it hurt or not because I was ripped to the tits on intravenous valium. I do remember they used a brilliant little ratchet spanner thing to screw the teeth to the rawl plugs, and them refusing to let me take it home with me.

How much did all that cost?

I won't be buying a new Ford Focus anytime soon.

[Bike Breaker]

Just a little mumsy-type warning.
If anyone has toothache/mouthache/faceache* for an extended time, go to a dentist. If there is an infection it can become an abcess and will attack the bone adjacent to it. The infection can also spread to other parts of the body via the bloodstream. The jury is still out as to whether it can damage the heart and the brain. Some research has said there is a link, others say there isn't. Is a fear of dentists, needles, drills, pain, and blood, worth the risk?


*No, not the wife.

[gremlin]

Well this is becoming a bit of a bother. Over three weeks now and here I am on holiday and eating anything is causing great discomfort across the whole lower left side of my face. Constant low-level pain all other times.

Spoke to the surgeon yesterday who advised me to get some more antibiotics. A trip to a farmaccia just down the road and I managed to get some bloody strong ones.

Hoping this does the trick. I'm currently munching paracetamol, naproxen and now amoxicillin, all to little effect. Will have to sort something out when I get home, self-isolation or not.

Not a happy gremlin...

[The Martian]

Damaging the infra orbital nerve in your face is worse, imagine having a bad tooth ache like pain constantly for over 5 years that no painkiller helps with (unless you want to be so smashed on them you barely know what day it is).
It's faded a bit over the last couple of years but it almost drove me insane.

Also done the wisdom tooth thing a few years ago, looked like I'd been in a car accident afterwards due to the dentist having his knee on my cheekbone for leverage.. it really didn't want to come out!

[Editor]

Damaging the infra orbital nerve in your face is worse, imagine having a bad tooth ache like pain constantly for over 5 years that no painkiller helps with (unless you want to be so smashed on them you barely know what day it is).
It's faded a bit over the last couple of years but it almost drove me insane.

fucking hell Marty. I had a nerve die on me over 24 hours & I was on the verge of suicidal. Hell on earth.

OK, here's the other side of it & you can draw your own conclusion about whose the best for what kind of a job. Back when we were OK I had an excellent but pricey private dentist, who dealt with the above nerve & another one. Then came the famine, but I kept the faith. About 40ish I had a sodding wisdom tooth (or something at the very back) arrive. He looked at it, sat down, made a phone call & came back to gently tell me that he reckoned my best bet was a hospital job & he knew exactly who & had just lined it up. John was very well aware of our situation.

Got there, brisk & efficient but with compassion & humour. I was shitting myself. Dissolved pills, a firm scalpel I could feel running down tooth into gums, bish bash bosh no drama & job done. I had a little blub with relief when it was over.

And that was it, & now I come to remember that was on both sides too.

Prob helped she was a ginger haired soft-fringed goddess too.

[Skub]

Prob helped she was a ginger haired soft-fringed goddess too.

Maybe the drugs helped with that....

[demographic]

Been lucky with wisdom teeth but after saying I'd never had a bat in the face I wouldn't have taken for ￡50 I managed to get into some bother and got my jaw broken. Fucked if I'd have let that happen for fifty quid.

Anyhow, it fair hurt for a good length of time and my body seemed to be keen to rid its self of the bits of titanium the hospital bridged it with over the next few years and every once in a while I spat a Ti screw out and eventually the little bridging piece came to the surface and I pulled it and the last remaining screw out with a pair of pliers.

Still got the bits (bridging piece and three screws out of the four cos I lost one) I pulled out in a little box somewhere.

[chutzpah]

Just today I got a letter inviting me to make an outpatient appointment for a consultation on removing an impacted wisdom tooth. The dentist said in March, just before everything kicked off, that she was going to make a referral to take it out.

Needless to say this thread has cheered me up no end.

Update....

After a good look and a mouth x-ray, lady at the hospital informed me that contrary to what my dentist told me back in March, in her opinion I don't need my impacted wisdom tooth out and it would be better to leave in situ (it's not bothering me & it's not decaying so doesn't meet NICE rules for an extraction), and was very very very apologetic "for having to make a wasted journey"

Apologise? For that? I practically danced out of there.

(Plus I got to ride my bike there and back)

[The Afterburner]

I had two out in my late 20’s early 30’s at Birmingham dental hospital. I wasn’t told that a student dentist (Female) would be doing the work. She had her knee in my chest and was tugging away, sweating and struggling with the big pliers. I could both hear and feel the tooth creaking around, followed by a loud CRACK !!. A shocked look on the “Dentists” face, betrayed her attempted veneer of calm, and then after a pregnant pause she found herself saying out loud “F**K” !!.
Now that’s no really what I wanted to hear, and despite my gob being braced open, and looking like a grotesque ventriloquist dummy, I managed to utter something resembling “F**k what” ??.
It turned out that she had snapped the tooth leaving all the roots in my gum, and the only way to retrieve those were to slash at my gum with a scalpel like a demented Serial killer. The subsequent post op recovery was about as pleasant as the experiences of the OP above.

[The Martian]

Prob helped she was a ginger haired soft-fringed goddess too.

Maybe the drugs helped with that....

You'd need to be on drugs to refer to a ginger fringer as a goddess

[Hoonercat]

My only naughty moment was on the Friday it was done. I took a sip of the wife's red wine and immediately regretted it as I managed to dislodge the clot and my mouth promptly filled with blood.

I'm going to take a wild guess that's where your problem has stemmed from, you should have gone back straight away if the clot dropped out within the first few days. Your dentist should have really hammered that home to you as it's very easy to get an infection if the clot drops out.

[gremlin]

Well this saga is dragging on longer than Brexit and is almost as painful...

Having returned from Italy I was trying to do the self-isolating thing but my jaw was getting worse every day. Called the consultant and he was insistent that I come to see him and I glad I did. After further 3D imaging it transpires I have an infection in the bone and a small fragment of tooth root remaining.
Put on notice yesterday that a second procedure of debriding the bone is required. In essence, open it back up, scrape and drill the gunk out, sew it all back up. Wasn't put at ease by the word 'urgent' being peppered into many sentences...

Bit pissed off TBH. Not with the surgeon or hospital, but just the shitty situation. Been in increasing pain, fucked me holiday a bit, made worse by feeling I couldn't go to see the quack. And now, I'm back to square one with worse recovery and discomfort anticipated.

Fuck sticks.