chipmunk cheeks

I can't talk but I can write and say thank you for all your well wishes!  The good news is it's over and all of my wisdom teeth are gone forever (thank God they don't grow back) and that I did NOT lose permanent feeling in my lower lip! I was so relieved when I realized I could feel my lip. The bad news is that the surgery was difficult and I'm in a lot of pain.  The morning of the surgery I received a call from the surgeon's office that they'd made a mistake and realized that they didn't have an alternative anesthesia for me (I'm unfortunately allergic to the most common one) and so I'd have to be awake for the surgery!  This made me even more anxious so they had me come in early for a little pharmaceutical assistance in relaxing. 

I won't go through all the gross details with you but the surgery took about 2 hours and was very difficult. Unfortunately I was very aware of what was happening.  Eddie has been amazing and I'm so thankful for him caring for me. He keeps a record of when I take my meds and lets me know when to do what.  Wednesday night he really got some good parenting practice because I was like an infant needing care at least every 2 hours.  I'm rockin' a steady diet of applesauce, yogurt, pudding and ice cream.  I'm very swollen (think Nutty Professor or a chipmunk with full cheeks).  The surgeon gave us a forewarning that I would likely be in a great deal of pain, more than the average patient, because of the way they were impacted and had to be extracted in pieces around the nerve.  He was right, I have never been in more pain in my life, no exaggeration. I'm trying to distract myself with books, internet surfing, t.v., music, and sleeping when possible.

Did you know?... 

• mandibular third molars are called wisdom teeth because they typically appear between ages 17-21 or older, when people are supposedly "wiser". 
• it's been postulated that the skulls of our human ancestors had larger jaws and more teeth to help chew down foliage and to compensate for the lack of ability to efficiently digest the cellulose that makes up a plant cell wall.  As human diet has changed, a smaller jaw was selected by evolution, yet the third molar (wisdom teeth) still commonly develops in human mouths.  
• Other findings suggest that a given culture's diet is a larger factor than genetics in the development of jaw size during human development (and thus the space available for wisdom teeth). 
• Different human populations differ greatly in the percentage of the population which form wisdom teeth, ranging from 0.2% in Bantu speakers to nearly 100% in Mexican Indians.  The difference is related to the PAX9 gene and perhaps other genes related to tooth formation.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_teeth