I needed mine because I lost my back premolars. They emerged when I was 20 and have worked fine ever since. Despite all the US jokes about bad British dentistry I do think our dentists (and mine is private) focus more on conservation than on possibly harmful intervention and cosmetic treatments.
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My wisdom teeth caused a real horror show in my mouth. They pushed my back molars down and sideways. To fix that, the dentist first had to cut my gums away, then mom drove me to the orthodontist where they got the braces in place just after the anesthesia wore off. Separately, I had to have a trip to the oral surgeon to get all four wisdom teeth broken into pieces and removed. Couldnât wake up for hours from the anesthesia, then finally woke up in a mush of blood, spit, and gauze. Dry sockets within 24 hours.
The extra orthodontic work those teeth caused added almost a year of braces, which traumatically limited my adolescent romantic efforts. The very day those stupid braces came off, my luck with girls did a 180.
Man, screw those Judas Iscariot wisdom teeth.
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I guess many people with impacted wisdom teeth who have no problems simply do not know they have impacted wisdom teeth.
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Doesnât impacted mean that the wisdom teeth are unwisely growing directly into regular molars, causing massive pain, at least until the wisdom tooth cuts the molarâs nerve? Thatâs sort of all I remember. I had two impacted wisdom teeth removed.The other two wisdom teeth were removed as well, for more or less cosmetic reasons - they were heading out of my face, and there were no holes in my cheeks for them to fit. I did try to argue with my mom and the dentist that it might be kind of cool. Punk wasnât very popular yet.
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Tell this to my (former) horizontal wisdom teeth. âGood Lord, those mthrfckrs hurt like *****. I still get nightmares from that sh*t.â
Added parenthesises for formatting reasons. Teeth still stink.
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Both my girlfriend and myself had lower wisdom teeth removed for good reason: compressing other teeth, in her case splitting headaches, in mine they partially emerged, and then rotted because I couldnât clean the parts that were still in the jaw. On the other hand, my upper wisdom teeth could not be more impacted: theyâre practically horizontal and going straight at the teeth adjacent. But they also appeared to not be moving, so my oral surgeon decided to leave them. I can see the impetus to push for unnecessary extractions ($$$), but have seen no evidence of it in real life.
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I will go die now. See yâall.
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My sister had an experience like that. She is a badass.
I think they had to blast mine out Wile E Coyote style, because when I asked to see them, it was just a jumble of bloody little tooth chunks. I am not a badass.
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Plenty of room in your jaw, huh?
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I think they usually just put them in a vise until they shatter. Imagine doing that without anestheticâŚ
Still got all four of mine, but theyâve all had plenty of cavities and one of them is partly gold now. So it goes.
I doubt it goes as smoothly as this here GIF:
http://imgur.com/gallery/uer28Zd
[quote="nixiebunny, post:5, topic:72972"]We did evolve to have wisdom teeth for long enough for us to make babies and rear them to independence, after all.[/quote]The other day I saw a comment suggesting "Our diets are horrible now because people didn't used to get cavities!" and I thought about posting a rebuttal of some sort, but then I realized I would have to start reading about medieval dentistry and that is not high on the list of things I want to spend my time doing. :scream:
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I guess that could be why I didnât have issues then. I was lucky enough that my teeth just twisted and gave as a whole, instead of resisting and causing all that pain.
No fucking way. Thatâs frightening. I was completely under general anesthesia, and good thing too, because even completely numb I would have lost my cool.
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I was told that I was getting a sedative, not a general anesthetic. They said that while my wisdom teeth were coming out, I would be awake, but would not particularly care.
Iâm not sure if I just fell asleep (I was chronically sleep deprived as a teenager, so this is possible) or if Iâve just blocked the memory, but everything from about 30 seconds after I got the drugs to about an hour after surgery is just gone. I woke up and they were giving me oxygen because I was still just way too passed out.
Apparently the roots on my teeth were quite twisted so they came out in many pieces. Itâs a memory Iâm just as happy not to have.
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âThis could also be said of nearly other AMA-recommended body modification procedure that nature didnât intend.â
So, procedures like, fillings, or hip placements, or prosthetic limbs, or heart surgery, or kidney transplants, or surgical removal of tumours, orâŚ? No, sorry, thatâs nonsense. Nature didnât intend that any of us live past the age of forty, and evolution necessarily renders any living organism as merely a work in progress. Our bodies are far, far from perfect, and modern medical practice â including procedures making permanent body modification â is the reason life expectancy has been rising each year for 150 years. Whether something is ânaturalâ is irrelevant to whether it is likely to enhance quality or prolong quantity of life.
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One, even the super-fakey video without the gushing blood and splinters of bone and tooth is still kind of horrifying.
Two, donât worry about medieval:
Three, about those awesome diets:
Had mine out preemptively in college while I was still on my parentâs insurance.
One was malformed (no roots), one was impacted, one was completely absent, and one was totally normal. Had no trouble at all with the impacted one, but they suggested they all come out anyways. /shrug
Fast forward 14 years, I start to feel some pain and swelling in my gum, and take a look to see some white poking out of a hole in my gum.
Cancer! Ahhh!
So like any red-blooded American I poke at it with a safety pin. The missing tooth!
My dentist tells me this is not uncommon, though.
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Some of the sedatives and general anesthetics simply cause paralysis combined with the inability to create memories. I was under a general, but I was also âawakeâ and responsive enough after the surgery to walk out of the operating room to a waiting room, then get in the car for the drive home, then make myself comfortable on the sofa with the cushions for my head and lots of cotton in my mouth. It was only after doing all of those things that consciousness returned.
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Driving sounds remarkably dangerous under those circumstances
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