Wisdom Teeth Removal Series: the Recovery
If you haven’t read the first and second part of this three part series, you can read about the consultation and the removal here.
Today officially marks one whole week for me without having wisdom teeth. It has been a rather interesting week and it feels like the first part of it went by really slowly. That may sound a little confusing, but I will explain it all once I share the recovery process post procedure.
I am going to count the day I had my wisdom teeth removed as the very first day, so let’s start there! Before the medication they gave me to go to sleep wore off I took an Advil to make sure that I wouldn’t be in too much pain once I could feel my mouth again. I didn’t use the mediation they prescribed because I just didn’t want to take all of the pain medications, but that was a personal choice and a lot of people use whatever the doctor prescribes. However, for me, just taking an Advil every few hours worked great.
Another tip that I highly recommend is to ice your face as soon as you get home. Doing this right after the surgery really helps to keep the swelling down and I never really had too much puffiness thanks to this simple routine. For icing, I used two bags of peas instead of actual ice. I didn’t want to deal with the ice melting so the peas were a great idea and something that was definitely worthwhile!
The actual day of getting my wisdom teeth removed really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. However, the next day was a little more challenging. I definitely had swelling the second day although it wasn’t a ton, and I had a really stiff jaw. Basically, I ate ice cream for every meal the first three days after surgery. That was the only thing I was allowed to eat and could manage to eat. I did mash down a single slice of bread just to eat something with more substance, but otherwise I was practically made of ice cream by the third day.
I took the advice of my oral surgeon from the consultation and I slept on three to four pillows. It is required to keep your head elevated the first few days so blood doesn’t rush to you moth and cause more bleeding. This means no bending down to pick things up and sleeping on an elevated surface. I definitely feel like following this advice helped me prevent any unnecessary bruising.
After the fourth day came around, I was finally able to eat one of my favorite sandwiches — a PB&J! Albeit, I ate this sandwich in very small bites, it did feel amazing to finally not eat just ice cream and feel hungry again soon afterwards. My jaw was still stiff on the fourth day so it was back to ice cream pretty quickly after that.
By the fifth and sixth day I was feeling so much better! There really wasn’t too much pain anymore, but I still felt a little achy where the wisdom teeth were. I still had to be cautious about how I ate food and made sure that I wasn’t eating where the wisdom teeth were extracted.
Another tip that really helped me in this recovery process was rinsing my mouth with lukewarm salt water. You definitely don’t want to drink this stuff because it smells really bad and it isn’t good for you, but it feels amazing on your gums while they are trying to heal. I believe that it has helped a ton in finishing off the healing process.
Although I am probably still far away from being completely back to normal, I am getting closer and closer each day. This recovery process has not been as bad or daunting as I originally thought it would be. Honestly, just thinking about the pain that I would face afterwards was one of the scariest aspects of getting my wisdom teeth removed. But after experiencing the overall process I can definitely say that if you follow the tips that your oral surgeon gives you and let your body have the time it needs to heal, you should be just fine.
Much Love,
Sarah
