T w e n t y S i d e d
Well, there comes a time in nearly every young adult’s life when the dentist looks at them and says ‘time to get those wisdom teeth out’. Most of the time this is said once, and then they do it, and you have fewer teeth, yay(?) I get that there are all sorts of reasons humans have evolved this stupid extra medical cost, but I get mad all over again every time I remember. It’s like your appendix, I know it logically has or used to have a purpose, but as far as doctors can tell that thing just sometimes self-destructs and kills you for no goddamn reason.
That aside, dentists have been basically pleading with me to get out these bonus teeth for years. The first time a dentist told me I needed them out, I was 18. This guy handed me a piece of paper face-down halfway through our consultation. The expression he held in that moment told me the paper was either informing me I had months to live, or how much the procedure would cost. Unfortunately, it was the latter. $6000, out-of-pocket, barring complications and extra expenses.
I looked at the number, and at him, and said ‘Oh yeah, I’ll talk to my in-laws about arrangements and make an appointment’. I’m pretty sure he knew I was lying since he was a dentist and it was straight through my teeth. Sort of his field.
I changed dentists.
The second time a dentist told me I needed them out, I was living at home with Mom and Dad again. Elliot, my fiance at the time, had a low-paying starting job at a local gas station and we were barely able to pay the little bit of rent my parents asked us for. We were 19, about to get married, and the local dentist was doing a ‘free day’. It was for cleanings and simple extractions, but after they took the x-ray, the dentist told me I’d be coming back. Weirdly presumptuous, do tell. Why on earth would I be coming back to the tooth palace where I experience pain and discomfort and also give you my money for it?
Guy drove a hard bargain, I’ll admit. He said my wisdom teeth were pushing against my sinuses and could be some of the cause of the horrible headaches I’d been having. He really sold me on the idea of coming back for a minute there, that is, until I remembered that it would cost money. I again lied to a dentist. ‘Oh yeah, you’re right, I’ll talk to reception about an appointment’ I nodded, took the free cleaning, and left.
The third time a dentist told me I needed them out, it was a ‘free dentist’. That name is really confusing since it seems like it should be…free, but really it just means low income. I was about to start college, around 21. I was going to the free clinic in the area and they just sort of made me an appointment. I didn’t ask them to, I didn’t tell them I wanted dental care, they just gave me a time, date, and place, and told me to be there. Pushy.
The appointment itself was a weird hellscape. I waited in a room small enough I could touch both sides if I stretched and the walls were covered completely in sex trafficking warnings and hotlines. There, in that weird dystopian postage stamp, I waited for two hours. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not usually one to complain about wait times, but two hours was damn near impressive. Outside the room, I could hear the dentist and one of the nurses having a screaming match about something. It seemed normal, though, since the janitor woman kept throwing in little quips making fun of them both. That was a really, really weird day.
When the doctor finally came in and I entirely missed my chance to flee the room, he held up my x-ray from the last dentist I’d been to. These guys talk to each other! Snitch. Like, I know I signed a medical record release so they could, but come on! Anyway, he tells me I need my wisdom teeth out and I give him the same song and dance I gave the last two guys. On if chief, yup.
But he also tells me I need six other teeth out. Six?! I might as well get dentures! He points all over the X-ray with a pencil to show me the damage, and I nod. Right, of course, on it, I’ll make an appointment with the receptionist, mhm.
The teeth aren’t hurting me, so I don’t figure I need to worry about it yet. I’ll go home and ignore it like I’ve been doing until something changes. But then he offers to take one of them right there!
Uhhh…I can’t think of a lie, or a legitimate reason not to, and he blatantly ignores my weak ‘um I don’t wanna’, so out it comes. It’s a molar, so at least it isn’t visual, but like, that guy took my tooth! When I go out to reception they charge me $200, which is the first time I’m realizing that ‘free’ is an extreme exaggeration. The woman behind the counter tells me I need to come back for the next one until all six offending teeth are gone and I tell her I don’t want to. She then…tells me she can’t let me leave without making another appointment? I am baffled, but, sure? Another appointment I make, and then dutifully and intentionally skip. I hate wasting people’s time but I’m pretty sure I was nearly a kidnapping victim via a dentist right there, no thank you. I didn’t even want the damn appointment to begin with. What was that entire experience?
This brings us to the present day. I have insurance! Finally! Thank God. I went to the dentist this last week and it was normal! No one was insane at me, and it would have been amazing if I didn’t fucking hate teeth-doctors.
Turns out that of the five other teeth the alternate reality ‘free’ dentist wanted to take, four of them are entirely salvageable with fillings, even three years later. They took the one that wasn’t and sent me on my way without threatening to…I don’t know, keep me at the dentist’s office…forever? Plus, they’re going to take my wisdom teeth at the expense of an insurance company. Hell yeah.
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Yikes! And I thought my experience of having an Army dentist pull all four of my wisdom teeth without anesthesia was a horror story.
I hope you have no more teeth doctor adventures for a very long time!
I can’t remember how old I was when I had my wisdom teeth out, but I do remember it happened when it did specifically because it was the last chance I had to have it done and be covered by my father’s insurance. Looking at it like that it feels like it was a kind of turning point into adulthood where I’d have to contend with getting my own insurance, something I couldn’t manage to do until the ACA was passed and Medicaid got expanded.
I got my wisdom teeth out a little over a year ago. Had a massive headache the night before but wasn’t sure if I was allowed to take medication for it before general anesthesia so I just suffered through and didn’t sleep at all. By the time I got there I was just like “KNOCK ME OUT ALREADY PLEASE!!!!”
Seconds later I was waking up, no headache, and pleasantly pumped with (I assume) fentanyl.
Be warned though, you mentioned that some were pressing against your sinuses so I assume your oral surgeon talked to you about the possibility of sinus communications right? Good news is, while they don’t taste that great, they’re completely manageable but you have to take them seriously. Any pain/nasty-drainage from your upper sockets after 3-4 days should be reported immediately and you should be put on stronger antibiotics. I battled a nasty “healed,” infection for about 8 months before switching doctors, being put on stronger pills, and suddenly it was gone it two weeks.
I had dentists always telling me I needed my wisdom teeth out when I was growing. They would show me the x-rays of them coming in all sideways and such. Now in my 30s I have had none taken out, and they came in just fine and have given me no problems. It does make me mistrust them.
I am in my 50’s and have all four. Never had any problems.
I don’t recall any dentists telling me that I needed to have them out though. Like any profession, some are honest and some are not.
My dentist told me that I needed at least a couple of them filled because they had cavities, my oral hygiene in the back wasn’t all that great which is why I had the cavities, and so I could either get them filled and likely have to get more fillings or I could get them pulled. She ran it through insurance and I would have had to pay to get the cavities filled but the extraction was free. I went with the extraction.
Also in my 50s, maybe my wisdom teeth will emerge after I’ve got a bit more wisdom.
Huh, somehow my wisdom teeth have never bothered me yet. I figure it’s just a matter of time, but until then they’ve just been hanging out in my mouth doing nothing of note. Though apparently I’m missing one of them, it just never grew in it turns out. So that’ll be one less removal needed when the time comes.
Glad you’re getting a chance to get yours taken care of though, especially now that you get to use somebody else’s money in the process.
My mouth is small.
Two of my canines are pushed out of line with the other teeth in my mouth because there’s just no room.
Because of that, they were magnets for all kinds of icky stuff that kept trying to erode them. One of them lost the battle and had to get pulled, the other one has survived on fillings…
I had my wisdom teeth pulled, and then all four of the back-most molars. Half because they were badly decayed, half because it would give other teeth room so they wouldn’t be smushed against each other, making lots of difficult places to clean that keep getting icky stuff on them because of it.
Once all eight of those teeth were out, my other teeth slowly started aligning properly and I got all of them filled and fixed and cleaned, and now, finally, after eight years of doing as much work each year as insurance allows, I have a nice, healthy mouth. Minus one canine. And four molars.
Good luck, Bae!
Apparently wisdom teeth aren’t entirely redundant, your jaw just doesn’t develop properly if you spend your adolescence eating modern diet full of soft bread and processed foods.
My wisdom teeth removal was nothing exciting, but the anaesthetic did give me the unsettling feeling of waking up from a dream to find myself still in the dream. And then the drugs wear off and you remember that the dream is actually real, and that you’re surrounded by masked men and bright lights because you paid them to take out your wisdom teeth.
My experience wasn’t so bad as to be a living nightmare, but I very clearly remember counting backward from ten like the doctor said, and as I approached “0” I said (or think I said) “So, when’s this stuff supposed to kick in, doc?” to which I heard “Oh, he’s waking up, let’s finish up here.” Then I opened my eyes and everything was finished.
For a bonus, my mind was quite loopy afterward, and they gave me a piece of paper to read with instructions regarding the stitching in my gums. I read it out loud and they were impressed, but I wasn’t in a state of mind to tell them or be aware that I had not actually absorbed any of what I had just read. So, after my parents drive me home and the stuff wears off, I go to blow my nose, and I do so with more gusto than that paper had instructed. Suddenly I feel a very, very small piping of air bursting from one of the stitches in my gum.
Fortunately it wasn’t a big deal, it all healed fine and I was much more careful after that, but everyone was flabbergasted because I had read the paper. I told them I didn’t even remember what the paper was about, let alone what it said, and even the drive home afterward.
Anesthetic is a heck of a drug, man.
The impacts also vary quite a bit. A co-worker of mine had hers removed first, and she was really loopy, so bad that the dentist had to come and get her ride since he didn’t come up and she couldn’t remember who that was. So when I went in a bit later other co-workers were worried that they might have essentially find someone for me to lean on to get me out and so she made sure her boyfriend came with her to get that out … and I went out nicely and when I woke up recovered my senses immediately, so much so that I was bored and wanted to get up and they told me I had to stay recovering for a bit longer (they had me lie on a sofa for a while). I definitely could have found my way out to my ride and probably could have driven myself. And I’ve pretty much felt the same way the other two times I’ve had any kind of anesthetic.
Holy shit, this sounds like a dystopian nightmare.
$6000? Wow.
I was quite irritated when I had to pay £1500 ($2500 at the time) for three wisdom tooth extractions in a private clinic in Harley Street.
These days I’ve got a much cheaper private dentist.
Sadly UK dentistry is a mess, my county has exactly zero NHS dentists accepting new patients as they’re all handing back their contracts.
I think the one dentist is ethically challenged for operating without your consent
I think they try to do as much as they can possibly justify
Anytime a dentist wants to do anything when I’m not having any issue, I at least get another opinion
Oh, I absolutely feel you! I had my bottom wisdom teeth removed when I was 14 and wearing braces (they were pushing my other teeth forward). They weren’t fully grown yet, so they had to partially cut them out.
I had local anaesthesia so it didn’t hurt during the fact (although I can still remember the scraping sound the scalpel made while it was cutting my gums).
But the real suffering began the day after the operation, because I literally couldn’t open my mouth for several days. I spent that time eating through a straw and writing on a notepad whenever I had to talk. The mere act of swallowing my saliva hurt like hell.
And the worst part was that that entire ordeal was for one of my wisdom teeth. Two weeks later, I had the pleasure of experiencing it all over again for my other wisdom tooth, as well…
Am 51 and was warned to have them out as a teenager. Did need one taken out about 15 years ago but the others are still ok.
I had to have mine taken out too. Two were fully impacted (and were causing pain) and the other two were partially impacted (which meant they were at high risk of developing future cavities because their angle meant it would be really difficult to brush properly). The dentist recommended that I have them taken out in separate operations, but I was like “F that, I’m getting it all over and done with at once. Knock me out and take all of them at once!”
It was a thankfully straightforward op with no complications. The worst part was basically having to live on a liquid diet for the next week or so (which does some REALLY interesting things to your bowel movements, let me tell you!) I honestly don’t remember how much I paid for it, because I was in Australia at the time and they have really good public health coverage. There definitely was some kind of excess I had to pay, but my parents thankfully covered that for me as I was still in my late teens and living with them.
Never had to remove my wisdom teeth, but I had this weird thing where one of my milk teeth refused to fall off and made the normal tooth grow at a weird angle, so they had to remove that one instead. I spent a good time with a tooth considerably shorter than the rest until I eventually got it taken out too because it was constantly loose but refused to get out and it was seriously fucking me up when I ate. Turns out the tooth had some sort of weird hook at the end that kept it in place.
In any case, as it’ll be a surprise to no one, I have also been terrified of the dentist my whole life. Dentists really need to work on their image. Maybe don’t have such intimidating interrogation lamps pointed at you all the time and they seriously need to work on having their terror drills’ sound changed to something that doesn’t make it feel like you’re on an alien’s operating table about to have your entrails exposed.
I know it’s almost cliché to say at this point, but
what the fuck, America
At that point I would simply have to get them pulled out with dirty pliers by a mechanic in an alleyway somewhere or something
Good one, I snorted.
I do have a similar thing – one of my teeth fillings had to get fixed, but the guy wanted to pull it instead and get me an implant or a crown. I sat on that awful edge where I wouldn’t get government assistance because I technically made enough money, but in reality I could never have afforded either option.
Then he also said I would need five more new fillings. Jeez. I knew my teeth weren’t great, but that seemed excessive.
And then he said I would need him to fix my gums since they were bad. All of them. At every tooth.
So I decided to just go “yeah sure I’ll call for an appointment, I haven’t gotten my work schedule for next month yet, byyyeee” and went to a different dentist I had been to at some point.
That one was the exact opposite – fixed up the filling (free in Germany), said the rest of my teeth were alright and I heard him saying “0” about every one of my gums, so I knew they weren’t a problem. Guess that first dentist just wanted to profit off of me!
Unfortunately, the truth was in the middle of these two dentists. The second dentist just literally never does anything you don’t explicitly ask for. He generally works with panic patients. I get it, he does it so they actually come back instead of just not ever coming in for years.
But in this case, the tooth really did need pulling, so when it cracked in the middle of a nightshift and I had to go to the emergency dentist to get it pulled (which was excruciating), I wasn’t exactly happy.
So now, I’m back to that same game – going to a new dentist, finding out they want to do a crown (no thanks) or an implant (too expensive, only some parts of the literal screw are covered by byzantine insurance) and just leaving it as a hole. That’s not a problem on its own, say the dentists, but eventually I need an implant or a crown to keep the other teeth in place. Well, make me a better offer, then, because I literally don’t have the money for that.
(In terms of Wisdom teeth, I got really lucky – I only have two, for some reason, and while they aren’t situated *well*, they haven’t ever hurt and might just stay inert in there forever, if I’m lucky, so I never had to get one removed. Guess I’m keeping them as replacements, like a shark.)
I wore braces for… 13 years.
You know what the dentist told me one year later? “Yeah, I fucked up taking out two of your premolars to align the rest because your jaw actually grew in your puberty. So there’s a lot of slack now. You’ll need to use bracers again for… I dunno, two years?”
I got the hell out of there. He even told me the slack was mostly aesthetic, so I haven’t bothered since and it hasn’t bothered me either. It is not like I have a dental plan anymore and I already have plenty of expenses.
So… I sympathize with bad dentist experiences.
Uff, that reminds me of the dentist that unironically said he wanted to do a root canal treatment… on my baby teeth. Which, for anyone who doesn’t know, do not have actual roots to do a treatment on. My mum thankfully never went to that one ever again.
Getting my wisdom teeth out at 18 (I think) was actually one of the more pleasurable dental visits I’ve had, due entirely the general anesthetic I was under. No awkwardly trying to respond to small talk with a stranger who has their fingers in your mouth*, no listening to the nails-on-chalkboard sound of someone scraping plaque off your teeth, just a quick trip under, and boom, all done. I spent a week on painkillers so my memory’s a bit fuzzy, but while it perhaps wasn’t super fun in the moment I don’t have any particularly traumatic memories associated with it either so overall I’d have to say it wasn’t that bad.
*Fun for an introvert who likes their personal space!
Is this a cultural thing? I’ve heard this from American friends a lot, but thankfully, every dentist I’ve been to here in Germany only talked the absolute necessities (except one that only does panic patients, and even he was smart enough to never ask questions you couldn’t answer with a nod).
[quote]$6000, out-of-pocket, barring complications and extra expenses.[/quote]
And somehow people still wonder why USA is considered a horrible, terrifying dystopia to scare misbehaving children with.
Boy, this hits home. I had to receive like 15 to 20 fillings during the summer of 2020. I had developed tooth pain in the back of my mouth that was so painful that I couldn’t sleep.
I went to the dentist, and they told me all the fillings and whatnot would cost $5500. I also had to get a root canal, and I eventually got another root canal a year later (that tooth just disintegrated while I was eating a soft shell taco from Taco Bell, yay me).
The thing that I paid it all with was student loans. If I hadn’t received my loans, I wouldn’t have been able to cover the emergency. It was an emergency, in fact. If I hadn’t of gotten the root canal, I could’ve gotten an infection and basically died, woohoo!
Dental work is ridiculously expensive, and its a strange thing to me because teeth are a necessary for survival. I had no idea those little buggers could become so inflamed with pain that they kept me up all night. That was a rude awakening. I still have a poor diet unfortunately, but my brushing habits and flossing habits are better. I’ve had one filling since, and I may have to get another one this year, but it was better than getting 15 to 20, which I actually got over the course of 14 days (I basically told them to call me in the moment an appointment opened up.) That’s 14 days of numbing needles.
Good read. Well told. I had the “wisdom” out as a young adult under general. Your Grandpa Jim took good care of me afterward. I could make a nice little penny selling the pain pills on the street if I had any Idea what they were at the time. They were called Darvon, I think. Threw them away.
I got mine removed at 15 or so, because they were pushing my other teeth out of line. It was not a happy experience. I only got local anesthetics, and had to keep my mouth very wide open for over an hour because one of them was huge and only came out in five pieces. Since then, my jaw hurts whenever I keep my mouth open for more than a few minutes, which makes dentist appointments very much not fun. The other thing that happened is that the wound infected, my cheek started swelling like crazy, we had to go back to the surgeon, and he cut the thing open again, this time without anesthetic. It was painful before, but that was a new level.
Can’t recommend. If you find a reasonable way to keep your wisdom teeth, keep them.