Today in teeth

[kaberett]

Content notes/conversational parameters: brief discussion of oral health and teething; mention (no specifics) of anxiety dreams. On the whole I think teeth are skin-crawlingly awful, so please don't go into detail about oral damage/dental procedures/etc in comments. The level of detail in the post is probably a good guide. <3

1. My gums have been bleeding a bit over the last day or so. I've been slightly perplexed. This morning I... realised I now have an entire identifiably poking-out wisdom tooth, which would appear to explain that, then. And might also explain some of why I've been so tired (though maybe I'm just permanently tired now, ugh). I'm mildly baffled by how little it hurt but I suppose I have my maintenance load of painkillers to thank for that.

2. I have (probably temporarily) levelled up (again) at anxiety dreams involving teeth! For some time now I've been able to go, in-dream, "... okay, but this never actually happens, it's always a dream", only to have my subconscious respond with HA NO NOT THIS TIME IT'S NOT and a lot of very intense sensation and very detailed memories of the previous 48 hours. Night before last I successfully went "alright then, let's make an appointment with the dentist, and if it's still a problem by the time we get there I'll believe it's real." And... proceeded to wake up with no emotional hangover and no crawling sense of pervasive dread! I daresay my subconscious will work out a way around that one, too, fairly soon, but for the time being I'll take it.

Comments

[me_and]

Thinking about it, I've mostly had no pain from my wisdom teeth coming through either. Where there has been pain, it's been of the mild gum disease variety, which I strongly suspect is because it was mild gum disease because the fucker is awkward to get a toothbrush at, particularly while it was coming through.

[haggis]

This was my experience too.

[davidgillon]

Alex 1: Alex's Subconscious 0 ;)

[phi]

Without going into detail, my toddler is teething and as i watch it, i am immensely grateful i have no memory of my teeth coming in. I've not had anxiety or phobia around teeth previously, but boy howdy I do now.

Your current trick to route around the nightmare is very clever. I hope it continues to work for a long while!

[redbird]

I had no pain at all from my wisdom teeth coming in, to the point that I don't know when they did, only that they're there: I idly counted my teeth one day and there were 32 of them.

[jesse_the_k]

"idly counting my teeth" should be the name on a life-size portrait of Someone Important.

[recessional]

\o/ re: point #2

[kaberett]

On the one hand it might be nice if I still had vaguely-lucid dreams in any other context; on the other, if I'm only going to get one shot at them, I will... take managing to ditch the emotional hangover from the anxiety dreams.

[jesse_the_k]

Excellent work, brain.

[ludy]

I've had three wisdom teeth emerge (don't know what's happened to the fourth one). One was almost painless accompanied by mild itching much as you describe - i think that's what normal is supposed to be like. I remembered similar sensations from my 11 year old molars coming in.
The other two were more painful, because they didn't have space, and i did eventually have surgery - but that was much more about the ongoingness of it rather than the pain being unbearable. Obviously any kind of pain is un-fun but compared to to say living with Endo, my experiences really didn't match the Cultural Narrative of Wisdom Tooth Pain and/or Treatment being uniquely terrible. Most of the people i got that kind of message from were otherwise healthy (and mostly non-womb-ed) so i think it's more about pain that comes from body-processes rather than an obvious injury being an unusual experience for them.

[sporky_rat]

I didn't have pain from my wisdom teeth coming in. It was more of an itch sort of, but then one day I had more teeth. If I poked them with my tongue in the days immediately after them showing up, there was that 'huh, that's new' sore (like when you poke a tooth hole that just fell out as a child), but not pain. I was very pleased.

Hurrah for dodging your subconscious!

[niqaeli]

For what it's worth, I had hardly any pain from my wisdom teeth coming in until I had one get infected and that's... not really the wisdom teeth coming in being the issue, so. It's definitely possible for it to just not be that painful. Although my maintenance painkillers might also have been in play for minimising it as well. (That was before I went on the diclofenac but I basically lived on a naproxen+ibuprofen combo until then, so.)

And hurrah for the lack of emotional hangover! That is excellent, even if it does turn out to be temporary.

[feanelwa]

Wow, my wisdom teeth hurt like hell and there are numerous X-rays showing that they are lined up in a perfectly functional way. I was in the middle of my MA graduation ceremony when the ibuprofen wore off for one of them and the first thing I did after leaving Senate House was to pull the ibuprofen out of my enormous gown sleeve and take two of them with the first swiggable liquid I could find. And of course because I am S, I was standing there for aaaages before I could escape. Bodies are strange. Enormous sleeves are fucking brilliant. Two days after that I was in no pain at all because it decided it had grown enough for now thank you.

All four wisdom teeth are through now and they're excellent. So congratulations on your new tooth.