Wisdom teeth removal recovery

[Thenthatsthatthen]

Having 6(apparently I have extras!) wisdom teeth removed under general anaesthetic next week. 3 are badly impacted and may need the two bottom molars removed due to damage done by said wisdom teeth.

Any top tips for recovery? Already stocked up on paracetamol.

My recovery was pretty good. I was given Cocodamol as pain killers. The dosage was way too much and made me vomit, stopped taking them and just used paracetamol.

Yes to ibroprufen and paracetamol. I’ve had all of mine out. Top ones were easy, bottom bloody painful. Going for all at once will make it hard to eat. No straws and be careful about the blood clots. Very gentle swirling with salt water but not full on gargling. Only 1/4 of mine needed stitches but that one was the hardest recovery and I could feel them pulling for a while. With all of them I was fine on the day but had more pain on the couple of days after. I found wrapping an ice block in a towel gave a lot of relief early on and then alternating ice and heat.

Be careful about consistency of your food. I had some soup and got shredded chicken stuck in one of my teeth. Vegetables were hard for a while. Ice cream was the best thing early on and I think I basically had 24 hours of mainly eating ice cream.

No straws! Consider calpol and nurofen for kids, it's more expensive than tablets but easier to get down you if it comes to it. Just work out the dosage- I think the quivalent of 2 paracetamol is 4tsp of calpol- check that to be sure though. it's more gentle on the stomach especially if you can't eat much.

Sleep as much as you can! Showers and laundry can wait, just sleep.

Another one saying no straws!

having them all out at once is huge. I had 2 out the same side in 2 sessions. I was awake and had the dentist lean on my chest to pull one out. All was fine though

keep topped up with painkillers and do not underestimate have swollen and painful you could be the next couple of days. Take it easy

good luck

My single biggest piece of advice is to make sure they/you push down on the gauze afterwards in your mouth to help the blood clot. I've skim read the other comments, and can't see anyone mentioning that they had dry socket - I did. It is fairly unusual so long as you follow instructions (no straws, use salt water rinse etc), but because the gauze was almost immediately taken out of my mouth, my socket didn't clot at all.

Basically, if you have severe pain lasting more than a day, you need to look in your mouth and check you can't see bone. If you can, go back to the dentist and they will usually spray the socket with antiseptic, which instantly soothed my pain. Don't be an idiot like me and leave it nearly a week in agony, thinking I was being a wuss.

All that said, you're unlikely to get it, and people have given good advice above. I only mention it as it wasn't on the leaflet I got given after, nor did the dentist mention it at the time, so I was clueless.

Best of luck!

I had the bottom 2 out and had a neat bruise on either side of my face, about the size of a 50p. They cut out some bone to get at them and put in stitches.

I had no pain but the nurse insisted I took the Diclofenac that was prescribed. I did and ended up with such a face & headache after a couple of days that I didn't know how I was going to manage without them. When I ran out, I tried paracetamol and discovered I didn't actually have any pain, it was just the diclofenac. 🙄

It took a week to get over the anaesthetic.

And follow the instructions they give you. My husband didn’t and did get dry socket but was in denial until I forced him back to the dentist where they packed it with some sort of clove stuff. I was obsessed with the sockets.

Also be kind to yourself- that many out in one go is a lot and if they’re impacted they will be a harder job than more straightforward ones. I had my two top out together (easy) and then my bottoms out in two procedures. The dentist was very clear that the 4th bottom one was going to be harder as it was proper surgery compared to an easy extraction. I’d floated in assuming it would be like the others and he was like nah this one will take longer to recover and your face will be bruised and it will hurt. It took a lot longer than the others as well and I could hear a lot of cracking and drilling. I think a general will be better for you as you won’t hear the cracks. It did make me a bit on edge compared to the other ones as I knew it was taking a significantly longer amount of time.

Don't be freaked out if you wake up and find your cheeks sort of stitched together to your gums - they do it to somehow help with the healing of the gums (the do use dissolvable stitches). They didn't tell me about this before the op and I was freaked out that the inside my mouth looked like the Joker's face!

And as per a previous poster, you may find your face being rather swollen and black and blue....for me I think I actually looked worse when it all started going that horrible green/yellow colour before finally disappearing, which for me took about 2 weeks. I stayed away from anything too hot as my mouth was really temperature sensitive and stuck to soft things like cooled jacket potatoes/mash, slightly room temperature ice-cream, soup etc.

@MelOfTheRoses I'm glad it's not just me who takes a long time to get over general anaesthetics too! I felt really out of it for the week after I'd had it as well.

I had one removed and got a dry socket, it was agony. Had to have antibiotics.
I wa off work for 2 weeks.