Wisdom Teeth

Some of us hate them and some of us wonder what all the fuss is about. Wisdom Teeth are just another name for Third Molars, the teeth which most of us get to know between the ages of 16 to 25. For some of us with large jaw bones, these teeth come through fine and cause us no pain, discomfort or large dentist bill, but for others, all the previous things can become reality. The problem with Wisdom Teeth is that for some of us there is no room in our mouth to allow them to live happily behind out second molars. This lack of space means that they might never make it through the gum line or they will come through (refered to as erupted) on an unusal angle, not in line with the rest of your teeth. Either way, if there is no room of them to come through the term Impacted is used to refer to their state.

They say that you should have your Wisdom Teeth removed as early as possible if your dentist can forsee problems with them coming through properly. If left they can lead to other problems such as being hard to clean, infection, crowding of the rest of your teeth and if you play contact sports, maybe even fracturing your jaw. What is a relativly easy procedure on young patients around the age of 20, can be a major operation if the patient was 40 and the Wisdom Teeth have years to grow enormous roots.

The reason I am writing this post is that I have recently had all four of my Wisdom Teeth removed. Both lower ones were impacted and partially erupted which caused me a bit of discomfort from time to time. At the time of extraction the upper Wisdom Teeth were having no negative effects in my mouth but the dentist could for see problems with them with the x-ray which was taken of my jaw bone. I had my Wisdom Teeth removed to two separate sessions, upper and lower on each side at a time. I had let her know that I was concerned about the pain during the extraction and she prescribed me what she referred to as “Happy Pills”. These happy pills are actually Hypnovel or Midazolam which you take one hour prior to the procedure which give you a minor sedation and memory loss of the procedure after its effect wears off.