Jerry's Dental Update.

I've been asked by a few people how Jerry did this morning and how he is doing now.  So while I sit here watching the State of the Union Address, I am going to write a post about him - just to update you guys!

First of all - Please keep him in your thoughts.  He had a terrible time this morning and it's going to take quite some time to heal.  I really wish things would have gone better for him. . . but it's over, this morning, all 4 wisdom teeth were successfully removed over a period of 4 hours.

Thankfully, his appointment was first thing this morning.  I was not expecting to sit in the dentist's office for 4 hours. . . I knew it could take a while, an hour or two, but we were there F-O-U-R hours!!  Jerry got his teeth cleaned before they pulled anything.  Wanted to get his mouth as clean as they could before pulling anything to lower the risk of infection.  The very first tooth out of the gate was a complete booger.  The upper left was still under bone.  The dentist had to drill away bone to find his wisdom tooth. . . and THEN he had to get to where he could pull it out.  And let me tell you, I have never seen a wisdom tooth that huge!  My wisdom teeth were tiny in comparison.

After giving Jerry a few minutes rest time, Dr. Tracy was able to pull the bottom left with less difficulty.  The bottom left was the one giving him all the trouble!  So he felt instantly better once that one was pulled.  At this point Jerry was given the option to continue to the other side.  And Jerry wanted them all out and over with so continued we did.

The third tooth was the bottom right.  The dentist started to pull that one but had to stop because Jerry was feeling more than he could handle!  So Jerry got another shot of Novocaine and a few minutes wait for the numbness to take effect. . . then it was go time.  Once Jerry was completely numb, the bottom right came out okay.  The only difficulty with that one was because the tooth came in pointed towards the front of his mouth, so the dentist couldn't pull it straight up.  And because it was so far back and Jerry was swelling and in some pain, it was difficult for Jerry to open in jaw far enough to give Dr. Tracy enough room to pull it.

Dr. Tracy once again stopped to give Jerry some time to rest.  Especially since he was still wide awake through the whole thing!  They had him on the nitriousoxcide but Jerry didn't like the way it was making him feel and it was working TOO well because he was close to passing out.  They barely had to give him anything to calm his nerves. . . Dr. Tracy said normally people ask him to turn it up - Jerry was the first to ask that it get turned down!  After all that, Jerry still wanted to continue with the last tooth - upper right - knowing that once again the dentist would have to go through bone to get to it.

The last one took a while, because it was just like the first one.  They had to do a lot of drilling before they could even find the tooth.  Now, I did question the dentist on why we would pull them if they weren't bothering him.  And I was told that the older he gets the more complications he could have.  For example, the tooth could go into a sinus cavity which would be painful and require serious surgery to remove the tooth OR the tooth could get irritated and cause a cyst to form around the tooth causing a lot of pain.  The dentist actually recommends wisdom teeth come out by the age of 25 because after that complication become more severe.  Even though Jerry is 30, he recommends they come out before he gets any older.  So either way, they would have wanted to pull the last wisdom tooth before he got too much older.  So if Jerry could handle it, it was just easier to do them all at once.

Jerry was a brave guy, I would have been done with the first tooth.  But he sat through them pulling all 4 wisdom teeth.  The dentist said that 2 of the teeth were "worse case scenario" and the other 2 teeth were "one step below worse case scenario".  So all-in-all it might cost me about $300 after insurance pays - instead of the $215 I was quoted for mid-case scenario. . . but that's okay with me.  Nobody knew that Jerry's teeth were going to be so difficult AND the dentist gave us his home and cell phone numbers in case Jerry had any problems or if I had any questions.

Tonight Jerry is still taking the vicodin regularly because of the pain and as a few hours ago he was still bleeding a little bit.  His face is pretty swollen but he won't put the ice pack on it anymore because he claims it's making the pain worse.  So we've compromised and he keeping a cold wash cloth on it.  So far, there is no bruising but we will see what tomorrow brings!  I doubt he is going to jump out of bed and put up the dog fence like he wants too.  = )  It's definitely going to take him a few days to recover from all this!