I realize this title might be a little misleading but I'm keeping it. I mean, it is a mouth problem.
I haven't had any of my wisdom teeth taken out. I had all four up until just last month. I was at work, you know the deal, and I felt a weird jagged edge on my top right wisdom tooth. There was nothing I could do but dust off my insurance information (I mean text my mom, cause I'm on their insurance till I'm 26, thanks Obama) and go to the dentist. Now, I don't really mind the dentist. You sit in a chair, they do some stuff, you get up and leave, the end. My first visit didn't change this at all. I said
"Doc, what's the condition? I'm a man that's on a mission."
He said
"Son, you better listen, stuck in you mouth is a huge fucking cavity."
That's not really how it went down and I may have lifted some bars from the Beastie Boys, but that's basically what happened. Turned out all my wisdom teeth had cavities and the top two were literally falling apart in my mouth. He made me feel less like I had the hygiene of a street urchin when he told me that this happens a lot with adult wisdom teeth because they're apparently pretty hard to clean well. After checking out my teeth a little he started to take a whack at 'extracting' (excuse me, I'm trying to sound medical) my right wisdom half-tooth.
It took him about 2 minutes to remove it. It didn't hardly hurt at all for the next few days and everything was groovy. I still had to get my left zombie crypt tooth out, however, and this is where my mouth luck runs out.
So, before I got my left wisdom tooth 'extracted' I had to get a checkup appointment sort of thing.
Fine, I thought, whatever it takes I guess. I get there at eight in the morning, sit around and wait for a bit and finally get called up. First off, the assistant calls me up to get X-rays. Cool, I think they took X-rays last time and it cost me like 20 bucks out of pocket, but fine, I need these fuckers out of my mouth. We get to the X-ray machine again and I mention that I had this done last time I was here, a week ago, and she laughed it off like I was a retard. Then she pulled something up on her wizard box (it's not really a computer, I don't think) and says,
"Well, it looks like you had this done last time you were here."
Oh? I had no idea. I had no idea about what I just told you.
After that she led me through the weird rat maze that is the back room of the Dentist's office. I think it's to make sure you can't escape if you run. I sit on the chair and the assistant puts on some fucking 70's rock music on a bluetooth speaker, like I'm in the room of a sixteen year old boy who 'just discovered real music'. I was still trying to be positive at this point, just smiling and expecting top notch medical care. Oh my sweet naive child.
After a few uncomfortable minutes of small talk with the assistant, the Dentist walks in. She is 90 pounds soaking wet, five feet tall and happens to be asian, which of course is fine with me but I can hardly understand anything she's saying between her thick accent and that blue face mask. Since this is just a check up type appointment, I know it's okay. The dentist takes a tool from the tool table behind me, and pokes all of my teeth at the gum line while saying a number between one and four. One tooth even got a five I think, I remember thinking; Wow, that can't be good.
None of this was explained at all, before or after. I spent twenty minutes in a chair while a stranger I have a hard time understanding hovers above me, poking each of my teeth on both sides and with every prod says
"3." pause "2." pause "2... No, 3."
It was strange to say the least. This part was fine and painless, though, which gave me false hope for the rest of my experience. After the gum poking she gave me a prescription for some special toothpaste and sent me on my way.
This is when it gets bad.
I come in for my next tooth extraction about two weeks later. Turns out it's the first day that they are changing over to a new system so I have to wait a little longer and update all my information that I had just updated for them two weeks ago. No big, I'm a laid back guy that doesn't get worked about something so small and uncontrollable. Contrastly, there was an old lady right in front of me in line that was not a laid back guy and had to apparently address the whole room with a small speech about how many things she had to do today and how she really hoped this wait time wouldn't mess up her super important 70 year old woman day.
Take a fucking seat, lady.
We both only had to wait about five minutes before we were called up.
The same assistant lead me through the maze to the back office again and I sat down and got ready to have my tooth removed. I was under the impression that it would be another easy extraction and I would only have to be there for an hour tops. See, I work graveyard and I have to be asleep by 3:00 pm at the latest. Because I use Kaiser I have to take the appointments I can get, their dental office isn't open on weekends for some goddamn reason, so the only appointment I could get in the next 2 months was at 1:00pm. Not a lot of wiggle room to sleep, but again I thought it would be an easy extraction due to my last visit.
Boy was I wrong.
The dentist gets there and starts working on some minor fillings, which went fine. That little drill they use makes quite the horrible smell though, burning teeth is not a variety of candle that I would buy. Finally we get to the extraction process. It starts out normally enough. She's putting pressure on my tooth and whatever else dentists do when you're in that chair. The weird part is that she isn't putting nearly as much pressure on as the last dentist did, I'm not sure if that's because of what happened next or if she just wasn't strong enough. What happened next is that I heard an incredibly loud cracking noise, felt shards of my own wisdom tooth hit my uvula, and heard the dentist make a frightened whoop noise. She then told me
"Don't worry, it's just your teeth breaking"
Oh, well thanks, that makes me feel better.
This continued for an hour and a half. Highlights of that uncomfortable time included:
The dentist confessing she didn't have the right tools
The dentist reassuring me that it was only my bad tooth that kept splintering into my mouth
The dentist stopping in the middle of the procedure to take a cellphone call
The dentist constantly saying that she just couldn't do it and that she needed a different tool
The dentist pulling my lips so far apart that she broke skin on the corner of my mouth
The dentist constantly pulling my beard hairs (this one may have been unavoidable)
The dentist pinching my bottom lip in between my teeth and one of the tools several times
The assistant looking slightly nervous and telling me that we were, indeed, going to get this tooth out
The dentist walking off all the sudden and returning with another dentist.
After that hour and a half and when the other dentist came in, he sat down in the chair, introduced himself, and took out my tooth in ONE MINUTE. I mean a literal minute.
It took him sixty seconds to take that tooth out. I'm sure that my other dentist 'loosened' it for him, as it were, but come on. After that I get to finally sit up and not have my mouth open. Thank god. My original dentist looks incredibly flabbergasted and tries rushing me out as fast as she can. The assistant completely disappears and I basically get pushed out as soon as possible.
Gee, thanks.
My dentist's parting words were
"Now, this one is going to hurt a lot more than the last one. Take a lot of ibuprofen."
That was it.
Maybe a week later it hasn't really stopped with the minor pain and I use an oral mirror took look at my new head hole and find that I CAN SEE MY FUCKING JAW BONE.
Like it's just exposed, right there. I of course assume I have dry socket, even though it's only a really minor pain I have, and I call up my dentist to ask what's going on. His response was basically that I would know for sure if I had dry socket and it would hurt way worse. The only thing I could do was just wait for it to heal.
So I'm just hanging out waiting for that to happen.
I haven't had any of my wisdom teeth taken out. I had all four up until just last month. I was at work, you know the deal, and I felt a weird jagged edge on my top right wisdom tooth. There was nothing I could do but dust off my insurance information (I mean text my mom, cause I'm on their insurance till I'm 26, thanks Obama) and go to the dentist. Now, I don't really mind the dentist. You sit in a chair, they do some stuff, you get up and leave, the end. My first visit didn't change this at all. I said
"Doc, what's the condition? I'm a man that's on a mission."
He said
"Son, you better listen, stuck in you mouth is a huge fucking cavity."
That's not really how it went down and I may have lifted some bars from the Beastie Boys, but that's basically what happened. Turned out all my wisdom teeth had cavities and the top two were literally falling apart in my mouth. He made me feel less like I had the hygiene of a street urchin when he told me that this happens a lot with adult wisdom teeth because they're apparently pretty hard to clean well. After checking out my teeth a little he started to take a whack at 'extracting' (excuse me, I'm trying to sound medical) my right wisdom half-tooth.
It took him about 2 minutes to remove it. It didn't hardly hurt at all for the next few days and everything was groovy. I still had to get my left zombie crypt tooth out, however, and this is where my mouth luck runs out.
So, before I got my left wisdom tooth 'extracted' I had to get a checkup appointment sort of thing.
Fine, I thought, whatever it takes I guess. I get there at eight in the morning, sit around and wait for a bit and finally get called up. First off, the assistant calls me up to get X-rays. Cool, I think they took X-rays last time and it cost me like 20 bucks out of pocket, but fine, I need these fuckers out of my mouth. We get to the X-ray machine again and I mention that I had this done last time I was here, a week ago, and she laughed it off like I was a retard. Then she pulled something up on her wizard box (it's not really a computer, I don't think) and says,
"Well, it looks like you had this done last time you were here."
Oh? I had no idea. I had no idea about what I just told you.
After that she led me through the weird rat maze that is the back room of the Dentist's office. I think it's to make sure you can't escape if you run. I sit on the chair and the assistant puts on some fucking 70's rock music on a bluetooth speaker, like I'm in the room of a sixteen year old boy who 'just discovered real music'. I was still trying to be positive at this point, just smiling and expecting top notch medical care. Oh my sweet naive child.
After a few uncomfortable minutes of small talk with the assistant, the Dentist walks in. She is 90 pounds soaking wet, five feet tall and happens to be asian, which of course is fine with me but I can hardly understand anything she's saying between her thick accent and that blue face mask. Since this is just a check up type appointment, I know it's okay. The dentist takes a tool from the tool table behind me, and pokes all of my teeth at the gum line while saying a number between one and four. One tooth even got a five I think, I remember thinking; Wow, that can't be good.
None of this was explained at all, before or after. I spent twenty minutes in a chair while a stranger I have a hard time understanding hovers above me, poking each of my teeth on both sides and with every prod says
"3." pause "2." pause "2... No, 3."
It was strange to say the least. This part was fine and painless, though, which gave me false hope for the rest of my experience. After the gum poking she gave me a prescription for some special toothpaste and sent me on my way.
This is when it gets bad.
I come in for my next tooth extraction about two weeks later. Turns out it's the first day that they are changing over to a new system so I have to wait a little longer and update all my information that I had just updated for them two weeks ago. No big, I'm a laid back guy that doesn't get worked about something so small and uncontrollable. Contrastly, there was an old lady right in front of me in line that was not a laid back guy and had to apparently address the whole room with a small speech about how many things she had to do today and how she really hoped this wait time wouldn't mess up her super important 70 year old woman day.
Take a fucking seat, lady.
We both only had to wait about five minutes before we were called up.
The same assistant lead me through the maze to the back office again and I sat down and got ready to have my tooth removed. I was under the impression that it would be another easy extraction and I would only have to be there for an hour tops. See, I work graveyard and I have to be asleep by 3:00 pm at the latest. Because I use Kaiser I have to take the appointments I can get, their dental office isn't open on weekends for some goddamn reason, so the only appointment I could get in the next 2 months was at 1:00pm. Not a lot of wiggle room to sleep, but again I thought it would be an easy extraction due to my last visit.
Boy was I wrong.
The dentist gets there and starts working on some minor fillings, which went fine. That little drill they use makes quite the horrible smell though, burning teeth is not a variety of candle that I would buy. Finally we get to the extraction process. It starts out normally enough. She's putting pressure on my tooth and whatever else dentists do when you're in that chair. The weird part is that she isn't putting nearly as much pressure on as the last dentist did, I'm not sure if that's because of what happened next or if she just wasn't strong enough. What happened next is that I heard an incredibly loud cracking noise, felt shards of my own wisdom tooth hit my uvula, and heard the dentist make a frightened whoop noise. She then told me
"Don't worry, it's just your teeth breaking"
Oh, well thanks, that makes me feel better.
This continued for an hour and a half. Highlights of that uncomfortable time included:
The dentist confessing she didn't have the right tools
The dentist reassuring me that it was only my bad tooth that kept splintering into my mouth
The dentist stopping in the middle of the procedure to take a cellphone call
The dentist constantly saying that she just couldn't do it and that she needed a different tool
The dentist pulling my lips so far apart that she broke skin on the corner of my mouth
The dentist constantly pulling my beard hairs (this one may have been unavoidable)
The dentist pinching my bottom lip in between my teeth and one of the tools several times
The assistant looking slightly nervous and telling me that we were, indeed, going to get this tooth out
The dentist walking off all the sudden and returning with another dentist.
After that hour and a half and when the other dentist came in, he sat down in the chair, introduced himself, and took out my tooth in ONE MINUTE. I mean a literal minute.
It took him sixty seconds to take that tooth out. I'm sure that my other dentist 'loosened' it for him, as it were, but come on. After that I get to finally sit up and not have my mouth open. Thank god. My original dentist looks incredibly flabbergasted and tries rushing me out as fast as she can. The assistant completely disappears and I basically get pushed out as soon as possible.
Gee, thanks.
My dentist's parting words were
"Now, this one is going to hurt a lot more than the last one. Take a lot of ibuprofen."
That was it.
Maybe a week later it hasn't really stopped with the minor pain and I use an oral mirror took look at my new head hole and find that I CAN SEE MY FUCKING JAW BONE.
Like it's just exposed, right there. I of course assume I have dry socket, even though it's only a really minor pain I have, and I call up my dentist to ask what's going on. His response was basically that I would know for sure if I had dry socket and it would hurt way worse. The only thing I could do was just wait for it to heal.
So I'm just hanging out waiting for that to happen.
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