So that's what it looks like...

On Tuesday I went to the dentist to have one of my molar teeth pulled out. This tooth had been giving me various problems since June 2008 and it's had a filling and a root canal (followed by another filling), but an abscess was still been forming under the tooth. So in January I told my dentist that I'd had enough of it and that I just wanted it out and he scheduled me in for a March 1st appointment.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect as I'd never had a tooth pulled out, but I figured it'd be pretty much clamp and pull... and it was. He confirmed it with me a few times if I was sure this was what I wanted and possibly if I saw a specialist it might still be saved (although he said it'd cost £500-600 and no guarantee still), but it's outside of my "smile range" and frankly I've just had enough of it. He does all his appointments in 10 minute blocks which means it actually took 11 appointment to do the root canal so as you can imagine... it was just starting to drive me nuts having to keep going back to the dentist. As far as I'm concerned the root canal was the attempt to save it and that didn't work.

The actual extraction was really straight forward, after he was sure it was what I wanted he squirted something truely horrible tasting into my mouth and then I think he injected my gums twice. I'm not quite sure how many times he injected them because it was so fast and I was too busy recoiling from the truely horrible taste of this spray stuff! I've never had the injection before simply because I was told that it'll leave you drooling for hours and as such when I've had the fillings/root canal in the past I've just put up with it... and I won't be getting the injection again either if I can help it! I swear 15 minutes of pain is worth it to not have your face feeling dead for 6-8 hours :S I didn't want it this time either, but he insisted there was no way he was pulling it out without it - Pah!

So he handed me a pair of safety glasses, to which I joked "Cool, is it going to be in 3D?", but sadly that joke was wasted and he didn't smile and just said "No, sorry" (He didn't ever explain the glasses, but I assume they were so when he was pulling the tooth out if he slipped and whacked me in the face my eyes would be safe). To say the actual extraction was quick is putting it mildly. I think he had two tools and he grabbed on somehow, there was some wiggling, some hard tugging and less than 30 seconds from starting, it was out. For me the weirdest part was as it knocked my other teeth on the way out (as you'll see the roots are much bigger than I expected!). So are you ready for a gross photo? :)


Yep that's my tooth and yes I kept it! I asked before he started if I could keep it, although that did get some rather weird looks from him, the nurse and the receptionist! I guess it's just not something most people ask for, but as I said to them: "It's been with me for a long time!" I've actually cleaned it up loads since he gave it to me too, he pulled it out and pretty much dropped it straight into a bag. There was bloody and fleshy pulp all round in, in fact there wasn't even a gap between the two roots, I've had to clean all that out! :P

The filling broke away when he pulled it out, although I've pushed it back together, the filling was rather large and if you look at the left side you can see just how much of the tooth was actually a filling! As mentioned above, the roots were considerably larger than I expected and for some reason I also expected there to be four roots (not 2 wide ones), but I think it's rather fascinating.

I felt nauseous the first day, although that wasn't actually the tooth, it was the injection/spray thing! Before he'd even pulled it out I felt rather sick and that wasn't helped by tasting blood all day after he'd pulled it out and my jaw ached all day, but thankfully that passed. I followed their instructions as best I could (salt water tastes nasty!) and by day 2 the hole/blood clot it was visibly much smaller and by day 3 you could see the gums starting to reform. As of today (Sunday), there's still visible tissue damage, but I'm really happy with how fast it's healing up and at this rate I think it'll be all healed over within a few days. It's not causing me any problems at all now either as although I didn't eat at all for the first 2 days and I only have a pasta bake on day 3, since day 4 I've just been eating normally and not had any issue (salt water cleaning afterwards of course). So yeh, what I'm trying to say is, if you ever have to get a tooth pulled out for whatever reason, don't worry about it, it's really very straight forward and the recovery won't take long :)

Plus it is the WEIRDEST sensation when you stick your tongue in the gap... yeh I just thought I'd end on that :)