Dentist Day: Return From

I left for the dentist at around 2:15 pm and got to the office about 2:40 pm, filled out the paperwork and was back in the exam room around 3:30 pm. They did several X-Rays of my teeth and then went to work on me right at 4:00pm, he didn't want to send me home with a tooth that bad and me in that much pain. It ended up being oral surgery instead of a simple extraction, and the surgery didn't end until right at 7:00 pm.

It seems I am quite resistant to the local anesthetic so he had to pump me full of three syringes from the start, then another shot directly to the tooth's nerve. I went through that once every 45 minutes or so, as the anesthetic was wearing off very quickly. One of the wisdom tooth's roots was fairly straight, while the other one was curled under (not curled out) like a fish-hook, literally in a 180 degree arc. Once he cut the tooth in two pieces, he had to pry the straight end out, and once it was out he went to work on the other one. He literally had to cut into my jawbone with the little power saw to get the tooth out, which he still had to carefully twist completely upside-down before it came out.

What made it worse was he said I had the strongest gag reflex he'd ever seen. I screwed up two X-Rays by gagging while the X-Ray was taken due to movement from my gagging on the little plate you bite on. He numbed my tongue special with local anesthetic to help reduce the gagging reflex, which helped but didn't eliminate it completely. He still had to stop and give me several 5 to 10 minute breaks to calm my gagging self down and regain some calmness before he'd go back after it. He said he's had some gaggers before, but I won the prize for gaggiest patient of all time (hooray me!). He also said I was the most difficult case as far as actual tooth removal he'd had in well over a year.

After it was all said and done, he said if he knew how difficult this procedure was going to be I probably would have been charged double what it cost me. I don't blame him, it was a doozie of a time for everyone concerned. The surgical tooth extraction itself ran about $165 (it would've been $55 if he could have just rocked it out of the socket), and with the other fees, it ran up to $280 for the one tooth and the whole visit. Whew! Got the good stuff though, Percocet for the pain which he said I'd be really sore tomorrow after having my jaw wrenched open for 3 straight hours, plus all the needles going into the jaw muscle, plus the jawbone having been sawn into, not to mention the incisions to the gums, and the extracted tooth socket itself. It took three stitches to close me back up, though he used the self-absorbing kind of suture thread, so at least I don't have to go back to have the stitches taken out.

Even as uncomfortable, painful, and unpleasant as the actual procedure was, the doctor and all his staff were absolutely the best people I'd ever dealt with. So much so that even though the procedure itself was unpleasant, the overall experience was a pleasant experience that left me in a good mood and with a very favorable impression of himself, his office, the and staff.