Wisdom Teeth Removal: My experience

I was born and brought up in India and I'm 26 yrs old. You might be surprised but dentists in India never recommend to remove your wisdom teeth. Infact if you were to tell people from India that wisdom teeth should be removed they will be rather surprised.

Here in the US, its quite different and its commonly accepted that wisdom teeths must be reomved when you ar 18 or so. Here every dentist you will see, recommends to remove all of your 4 wisdom teeth. Infact insurance companies also support them as they know that later in life there might be more issues because of having them..

A few weeks back, I started having pain at the very back of my mouth. Yeah it was one of my wisdom teeth. After bearing the pain for a few days, I decided to see a dentist. I knew in advance what was going to be suggested to me . " Remove your wisdom teeth" and I was OK about it since about 2 yrs back I was recommended the same for my other wisdom teeth. On that occasion, I didn't remove it, took some pain killers for a few days and it has been OK ever since.

I picked the dentist after a lot of research and told myself to trust her judegement. After doing a panoramic X-ray, she diagnosed that my lower right wisdom teeth was partially under the gum and also a little slanted. She said it needed to be removed. Infact she recommended that both my lower wisdom teeths needed removal and recommeded me to an oral surgeon.

I was in pain and needed something urgently.I didn't have time to researh on the oral surgeon and hoped that the dentist was recommending me to a good one.

The surgeon told me that 3-5 days will be painful. But I had no idea what I was signing up for. After the surgery which lasted about 1 hr, next 2 days were kind of OK. I even went to work . The 3rd day was beginning of me experiencing the most terrible pain I've ever had in my life. I was taking Vicodin ever 4 hrs but pain wouldn't go away. I couldn't sit, couldn't sleep, couldn't do anything. I needed icepack continuously. The minute icepack would melt, I'll again be terrible. The next two days didn't spare me at all. When on 6th day I saw no signs of this pain leaving me, I went to the surgeon..She said it was normal... Normal ??? Huh???

She filled the two extraction locations with something that numbed it and for the first time in about 4 days, I'd some relief. But this was the first time I learnt something new... She told me only 80 percent of pain will go away at the end of 2 weeks....and it would take another 1 weejs for another 10% of pain to go away...and about 1 months for it to be back to normal... I was shocked.....

My expectations were not set to these....Nobody told me I'm signing up for a continuous pain which will last as long as a month....

Before my wisdom teeth removal I couldn't find any relevant info on the web.. I hope people benefit from my expereince. I'll also be happy to answer any questions from my experience.

Mountain Dew Mouth has struck again

What every parent likely worries about is what will be the result of his/her child's dental check-up. Well, what I thought was going to be a simple event in my 19-year-old daughter's life has become a time of taking out a $2K loan to afford the damage done by her soda-pop sipping habit (I don't have dental insurance...and boy do I regret that!). (Picture at right from: http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1836189&nav=168XMnyS)

She had not told the dentist about her consumption rate of Mountain Dew...but he described it to her with accurate illustrations as he reviewed her teeth x-rays with us. She has Mountain Dew Mouth, which dentists' have named the syndrome that results in numerous cavities in the teeth of sodapop drinkers - specifically those addicted to "The Dew". How many did he find in my daughter's mouth? 14....and possibly a few more in her front teeth that were not initially x-rayed! Luckily...(or maybe not) these were not extremely advanced. (This is likely because she was taught to brush her teeth daily - sometimes more than once - because of dental work she had before her permanent teeth came in. Thank goodness she was committed in carrying out daily brushing!) However, the damage was done and no treatment would mean more problems and expenses later. It was the pay now or pay later dilemma.

If you don't believe that this is a "real thing", here are some websites that discuss this problem that is becoming chronic for teens and 20 somethings:

Death by Autoclave

A few days ago I was opening the door to our autoclave to take out some steamy glassware, and the machine made a horrible sound and shot huge puff of steam out of somewhere on its top. I yelped and jumped back, covering my face with the huge filthy "hot mitts," and then thought about how exactly dangerous an autoclave is. For confirmation of this fear, I looked it up:

Clearly, my fears are not unfounded!

Also, they have huge 100 million dollar autoclaves for sterilizing starships! I harbor 100 million dollars worth of fear for these autoclaves-- the chances of getting trapped inside and steam-burned to death are simply to high.