Sunday, January 06, 2008

I have the teeth, but where's the wisdom?



For the past 3-4 days my one wisdom tooth that acts up occasionally has been acting up a lot. The tooth/gum itself isn't any worse than usual (it doesn't hurt to chew or open my mouth, and it's not very swollen), but for the first time I have an accompanying earache that is bad. I know I'll have to make a dentist appointment tomorrow.


I've been holding off on getting my wisdoms yanked because my last two dentists told me this particular wisdom will be very tricky to extract, and referred me to oral surgeons. I had a consultation with one of them but decided not to get the teeth removed: Only one of them is bothersome, and doesn't bother often. Also, I don't know anybody who has been to these oral surgeons and can vouch for them.


My current dentist, however, is 100% convinced she can extract my problem tooth "no problem" and continuously nags me to let her do it. This concerns me - she seems awfully confident, when two other equally experienced dentists were not. When Richard had a wisdom removed last year by a different dentist, I thought of going to the same guy. Then Richard got a horrible infection and returned to the dentist 3-4 times before the dude realized the problem was being caused by a huge chunk of gauze that had been accidentally stitched into the socket. I will not be going to him.

I may just have to bite the bullet and let my dentist do her worst...

Update: Turns out my dentist is on vacation, but I made an appointment for the 22nd. I'm going to ask her to remove just the problem tooth. (Richard asked, "Why don't you just go to [his godawful dentist]?" If I ever want to re-enact Little Shop of Horrors I'll go ahead and do that.)

5 comments:

tweetey30 said...

Hey hope the tooth is feeling better today. Mine is. Oh I thought i was going to die on Friday with the pain. And just the aspirin wasnt doing anything.

Wandering Coyote said...

Anything dental freaks me out. Luckily, I have great wisdom teeth and only have to endure a yearly cleaning/exam. I'm booked in at the end of the month. Good luck, though. I've had numerous tooth extractions over the years and I know exactly how awful it can be.

S.M. Elliott said...

The earache is barely there today, so naturally I'm having second thoughts. I DO want to get the one troublesome wisdom extracted, but I'd rather leave the other three alone. And I don't know if I want to have it done at this particular time. The regional theatre competition committee I'm on is putting on its show at the end of next month, Richard and I are going to Taiwan to see Paul & Juliet in the spring, and we hope to visit my family in the summer. On the other hand, if I could get this over with and heal before all this activity begins, that would be great...

tshsmom said...

I like your final decision. Get it done as soon as possible so you can be healed before vacation. Just get the bad one pulled. AND, don't use Doug's dentist!

S.M. Elliott said...

Yeah, I'll just have the bad tooth pulled. I know my dentist'll keep on nagging me about the other three, but too bad - they've never bothered me in the slightest.