Wisdom Teeth - Part III

Sunday, Thanksgiving Break.
#1 Priority? Schedule an appointment with the dentist.

And so I went. It was Wednesday where I went down the my dentist's office to check out my "dilemma." After doing the typical waiting room business, I went in to see the dentist.

An x-ray shot and some Vietnamese later, the dentist came in and broke the news. He showed me the picture first.

"I have never seen anything like this before."

I'm screwed.

On the picture, there was my wisdom tooth stuck almost right under the tooth right next to it (2nd molar). The problem was, my dentist explained to me, my wisdom tooth was pushing on BOTH the roots of my 2nd molar. In summary, this means I had to get the thing pulled. Great.

Trying to look on the bright side of the things, I told myself that getting a tooth that's already fully out probably hurts much less than getting a tooth that would potentially require a lot of sawing and hacking pulled out.

So I came back in a couple days later and that's when the fun really starts. The dentist goes through his normal antibiotics and anesthetics procedure and he soon starts.
Now this is just an aside, but anesthetics are crazy. (More on that in another post.)
Anyways, soon after my dentist starts injecting me with a bunch of unknown chemicals, he begins to yank my tooth out by wiggling it back and forth with this clamp-looking instrument. Surprisingly, it hurt very little and I was soon expecting my tooth to be pulled out and my troubles to be over with.
Unfortunately, fate my was yanking my chain.

After a few spurts of blood (Apparently that's what the dentist said he encountered. However I didn't feel it.), my dentist stopped and after a few brief pauses, injected a couple of more needles into me. (I would find out later that those would be to suck in the blood that apparently was flowing out.) He then told me to go into the other room and take a full mouth x-ray. After doing that and gargling some water, my dentist fell into this deep contemplation while he waited for the photos to develop. To me, it was a troubling sign. He kept staring at my previous smaller x-rays. If only I knew what he was thinking.

A few minutes later, the x-rays came back and my dentist told me that it confirmed his suspicions. Apparently, I'm severely lacking "bone" on the right side of my mouth and it's because of this that caused all of the major problems I faced (the bleeding and the strangely placed wisdom tooth). My dentist told me that because of the large amounts of blood that could potentially be involved in pulling out my tooth, he had to refer me to an oral surgeon at Harborview.
Great... more fun.

He had also mentioned that I was lacking that "bone" possibly because of a cyst or because of something else that affected me (I didn't hear the second one). Now I have a strong feeling that it was because of the swelling and bleeding episode that I had, which toppled the dominoes. I was feeling their impact.

Now as it stands, I have to call Harborview to schedule and appointment and pull the tooth ASAP. I'll see how it goes.

I just hope fate takes a little breather for this next part.