extractions done!!

[Harpua]

About an hour ago - no turning back now. I was so surprised at how easy it was. Literally took about 15 minutes since I sat in the chair and 4 extractions were done. Didn't hurt a bit, glad I didn't pay for an oral surgeon. It cost me about 230 dollars all together after insurance. Next week I'll be fitted for a TPA. And then a week later, I'll be a metal mouth. Here we go....

[Harpua]

One of these was a baby tooth so they removed the other 3 corresponding teeth as well to make room for my crowded teeth.

[nimo]

Glad to hear it went so smoothly. Did they give you any sort of pain medication?

[Flora2006]

That's really great that you didn't experience too much discomfort.

[Harpua]

They gave me local anesthetic, sent me home with some lortabs. I may take one here in just a few. I've been putting ice on a little bit. Dentist mentioned that I could use tea bags instead of gauz and it would help stop the bleeding - sure enough, after changing gauze ever 30 minutes I popped in a couple of bags (green tea with ginger) and bleeding seems to have almost stopped completely - just 2 little blood spots on each one now. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about getting all this started. Hope it keeps going smoothly.

[Harpua]

tomorrow morning - I should probably take one of these Lortabs before I go. Sounds like these may very well be one of the tough parts

[seeminglyshy]

Hi Harpua,

If you didnt go to an oral surgeon, where did you get it done? How did you find them?

[Flora2006]

They gave me local anesthetic, sent me home with some lortabs. I may take one here in just a few. I've been putting ice on a little bit. Dentist mentioned that I could use tea bags instead of gauz and it would help stop the bleeding - sure enough, after changing gauze ever 30 minutes I popped in a couple of bags (green tea with ginger) and bleeding seems to have almost stopped completely - just 2 little blood spots on each one now. I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about getting all this started. Hope it keeps going smoothly.

I remember when I got extractions 2 months ago...I bled from 3:30 until I fell asleep at around 12am!! And my extractions weren't even wisdom teeth. I wish I would have put some tea bags in my mouth! lol

[Harpua]

A general dentist. He is the other dentist at my primary dentists office. The staff person schedule it with him for me, she said he does a lot and is quick. The dentist that did the extractions told me that he often does 100 to 200 extractions in a week. It really was a piece of cake. My bleeding has stopped already now. The oral surgeon would have cost me nearly 900 dollars! Of course, if there was any suggestion that there might be a problem, I would have gone to a surgeon.

[Harpua]

Well, woke up this morning with no discomfort from the extractions (other than a horrible case of morning breath) After doing time on these message boards, I'm expecting the spacers to be the worst part. As far as I know, I'm only getting 2 on the top where my bands for the TPA will fit around my back molars. I'm hoping there won't be any surprises, but I would be thrilled if they were willing to go ahead and brace my bottom teeth, or even fit me for my appliance (scheduled for next week). I'm going out to eat my last meal and pop a Lortab. <Deep breath> and I'm off...

[Harpua]

It took all of a minute and a half. I was expecting an ordeal with a good dose of pain. In fact, I barely notice that I have them with the distraction of missing 4 new teeth. I thought this was the bad part! I even took the day off of work so I could stay at home in misery for the next few days. Is it going to get worse? Do they usually hurt when they're first put in or does that come as they start to spread the teeth apart?

[sleater]

I had my 4 extractions last Friday and the spacers put in on Monday. When they first put in the spacers I was like this is nothing..didn't hurt at all. That was around 5pm by around 10pm I started to get a bit tender and then that night trying to fall asleep was a bit difficult. By the morning I was in quite a bit of pain and called in sick at work. They bothered me a fair bit up until yesterday and today I am pain free. I took the tylenol 3's with Codiene when the pain was really bad and that helped. When it wasn't too bad I just realied on regular advil. Good Luck and hope all goes well.

[Harpua]

36 hrs in with my spacers and not too bad really. I didn't have any problems at all other than when I woke up at six in the morning to take my antibiotic, I felt a little pressure in the back of my upper jaw - still very tollerable. In the last half hour I've started to feel a slight discomfort, but its actually kind of exciting when I think about my teeth spreading out a bit like they should. I' ve had a couple of glasses of wine and may take a half of a Lortab before I go to sleep (just for good measure). I'm going in to get my pre-braces cleaning on Tuesday, should I have my spacers taken out so they can clean those back molars?? It seems like cleaning between those would be pretty important since they will have metal bands around them for some time! I really feel like I'm the only one looking out for myself in this process since I live in the middle of a city and my dentist and orthos offices are both very busy places. I'm so ready to just get the brackets on and see some progress. The dentist that did my extractions (liked this guy a lot) mentioned that he has repeatedly seen some very impressive work from my orthos office and said that I should be able to expect to see some progress very quickley with the room made by the extractions! So far so good - just worried about getting a good cleaning done.