I'm alive!! I lived through my wisdom teeth extraction!! If you are reading this in preparation for getting your wisdom teeth out, I just want to say I read through a lot of horror stories before mine, and I freaked myself out about it. The truth is - it's not a pleasant thing to go through, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that bad. You will live, it's better to have it over with. It's 4 - 5 days of discomfort, and then you'll forget all about it.
The teeth: I had no serious issues like impacted teeth, one of my lower jaw teeth appeared to be touching the nerve in my xray, and one of my upper jaw teeth was quite close to my sinus cavity. The biggest issue was that there were six wisdom teeth there. Kinda weird, but seemingly straight forward.
I did everything that I had read about online in preparation for my surgery:
- Asked my Dentist about aftercare so that I could prepare it all beforehand (unfortunately his office worker just told me that I would need to 'rest for a week' so it wasn't really all that helpful).
- Asked a friend to pick me up afterwards, gave her the contact details for my Mum and my Love as well as my health insurance details - should the worst happen.
- Stocked up on soup and puddings and kartoffelpüree.
- Wore a button up shirt to avoid having to pull anything over my swollen face.
I managed to forget the piece of paper my dentist gave me which stated which teeth should be removed (oops!) - but they didn't seem too worried about that.
I arrived ten minutes early - just because that's what I do - filled in the forms, it was my first time at this dental practise (they hadn't even asked me in for a consultation regarding the extraction, which had worried me if I'm honest) so I had all of those normal forms to fill out. Then they gave me a full sheet of after care instructions (perhaps something they could have emailed to me in response to my "Do you have any specific after-care instructions?" email). Then I had to wait approximately 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment time to head in, so I messaged my friend to let her know she may have to wait around for me.
Sitting in the room I noticed that I had a pretty prominent tremor all over, I was pretty nervous at this point. The assistant came in and told me where to put my bag and to sit down. Then my oral surgeon came in and introduced himself, asked me if I had any questions (which I did but apparently that fact slipped my mind so I said no), then he started to leave and I asked if he had any meds to use for nervous patients. He gave me two tablets of something "like valium" and then started injecting my local anaesthetic into the right side of my mouth. This was my first time every receiving injections in my mouth, I have only ever had two fillings before which didn't require any anaesthetic. I was surprised at how little they hurt, it was just a bit of a sting and then slowly I felt my mouth going numb.
Then he left me for fifteen minutes, during which time a few other dental assistants came in to ask how many teeth he was taking out, exclaiming at the fact that I had six wisdom teeth and staring at my x-ray. I didn't understand it all because my nerves have a negative effect on my ability to translate German. At this point I couldn't perceive any effect of the "like valium" tablets I had been given, and as the assistant put numbing balm on my visibly trembling lips, I started to worry that my trembling might affect the surgery.
The surgeon came back in, injected the other side of my mouth with the local anaesthetic, and got to work stealing my teeth. As far as step-by-step goes, I can't tell you much about what was going on in my mouth, because they only discussed it between themselves in German, and didn't feel the need to fill me in on the details. They always started with the top-jaw tooth so I could tell when they finished there because they would stitch it up before moving on to the bottom jaw, they needed to drill into both of my top jaw teeth to break them up to help the extraction. The drilling - you can't feel it really - but I found it pretty unpleasant. The bottom jaw was a struggle on both sides, my two extra teeth were in the bottom, so there were two on each side to be removed. There was a lot of drilling required and a lot of yanking. I was still shaking all over and the assistant kept squeezing my shoulder in what I assumed an attempt at comforting me. Then I finally saw them sewing up the last bottom jaw and I could have cried I was so glad for it to be over. There wasn't any pain, it's just really weird and uncomfortable.
The thing that bugged me was how many questions they asked me AFTER the surgery, I couldn't even tell the difference between my tongue and my chin at that point, I was in no position to be forming words! Surely that's something they come across a lot! So they booked me in to get my stitches out a week later and gave me my prescriptions (ibuprofen, antibiotics, and a special mouthwash) and sent my friend and I on our way. I wasn't sure what state I would be in so I had asked my friend to make sure I got home okay. I was actually fine, I have no idea what the "like valium" tablets were, but I think they were just sugar pills. As far as I have been able to tell since I moved to Germany, people don't like taking drugs unnecessarily, you can't buy pain killers such as panadol or ibuprofen in the supermarket, you actually need to go to the pharmacy for them. So I guess they are the same with giving laughing gas or some other calming drugs for procedures like this. Though in my research I had read about people getting what I guess I would describe as American-level medication throughout the procedure and recovery of wisdom teeth extraction in Berlin. So I guess just talk about what the surgeon offers before making your decision if that is important to you.
My friend took me to the pharmacy and got me home, she had bought me some goodies such as yoghurt, fruit smoothies, and ice cream, bless her. When I got home, I realised that I looked like something out of a horror film, no one at the practise had offered me a mirror to clean up in so I had assumed (naively) that they had cleaned up after themselves. So I cleaned up my face put on some ice packs, I have about eight little square ones that I just rotated, trying to keep icing them for the first 24 hours. I eventually fell asleep and when I woke up my face was HUGE and sore.
More on eating stuffs in the next post.
