I’m still surprised by all these painful experiences people are mentioning. I’m not doubting them at all, but as I said I’ve had 3 wisdom teeth out, one complicated, and only a bit of tenderness after each extraction and that feeling only lasted a day.
Have I been very lucky with dentists? Are the roots of my teeth or the shape of my mouth different from some other people’s? I really don’t know.
I still feel, however, that general anaesthetics should only be used when really necessary.
Er, oops. Good point. I was just ranting in general about unavailability of painkillers here, not in specific for oral surgery; I guess I should’ve ranted in a separate thread, though.
Joe, different people have different pain tolerances, and every surgery is different. Count yourself as being lucky. I normally don’t bother with anaesthetic at the dentist, ever, but that wisdom tooth was really painful, even though removing it was very straightforward and brief.
I, too, am surprised at all the horror stories.
I had two wisdom teeth pulled while in Taiwan, and also was never given general anaesthetic. The first was an impacted lower, and even though the extraction took an hour and there was blood splattered on my dentist’s coat afterwards, I was tender for only a couple of days afterward. The second one was a normal-growing upper, and I left the dental office 10 minutes after stepping in. And, again, the tenderness was minimal; I didn’t even finish the 3-day supply of painkiller I was given after the extraction.
You really just have to select the dentist carefully. For impacted teeth, you probably want someone with substantial upper-body strength. I have a friend who suspected her extraction of a perfectly normal upper took an hour only because her dentist wasn’t strong enough.
PM me if you’d like the name of my dentist. In the meantime, maybe if you just keep using Taiwan’s tap water for brushing, your gums will recede enough so that tooth extraction will be easier. 
I had all 4 (not yet erupted but impacted) surgically removed under general anaesthesia (in Australia)… the process itself was fine (duh I was asleep) but recovery was not so good
Hovering over a spit container for a few days… not eating anything for about a week… having a swollen face and thus remaining indoors for 2 weeks… had to get a repeat prescription of my painkillers, etc… not a pretty sight (though mine is probably a more extreme case, a lot of people I know, it went perfectly fine for them.
Oh well, that’s the last time I ever want to have any teeth removed… 
I’m afraid to read what others have written above.
Saturday I go in to have two wisdom teeth removed. Anyone who’s never had an excruciating tooth ache should be thankful. I’ve broken various bones, had cuts, bruises and other ailments, but this really sucks.
Left work early Tuesday for sudden, unexpected dentist visit due to sudden, unexpected pain. The whole fucking mouth was hurting. Hard to pinpoint the location because it all hurt, the mouth apparently having a closely linked web of nerves. Doc couldn’t find the problem, so he cleaned my teeth and gave me painkillers. Then yesterday it started getting worse, till I made the mistake of drinking an ice-cold pearl milk tea, causing intense pain to grip my jaw for 2 or 3 hours, till finally I could leave work and make another unexpected visit to the dentist. But this time the immediate source of the pain was abundantly clear.
So, he (NYU trained, so I feel confident) gave me antibiotics and painkillers to take 3 times a day now, leading up to Saturday, when he’ll inject local anasthetic and yank them out (they’re not impacted; it’s a matter of infection in the roots). Only one upper one is a problem, but he needs to remove the matching tooth below it.
Lying in bed this morning I was thinking “thank god for modern medicine.” I can’t imagine how one could endure such pain in ancient times or even in undeveloped nations, with no painkiller or antibiotic, and where it would get so bad you’d just grab a damn stick and knock the fucking tooth out of your head out of desperation.
But, now that my dentist has located the problem, and I’m properly medicated, I suspect the remainder of this ordeal won’t be so terrible.
I had all four out as a teenager under general anesthetic at the Middlesex Hospital in London, staying at the hospital for I think about three days to get over the general anesthetic and for the swelling to go down a bit. I was embarassed to pee in the bottle and made my way to the toilets. Half way through I fainted, hit my jaw on the toilet seat on the way down and was taken back to bed in a wheelchair.
After having my wisdom teeth removed I couldn’t open my mouth as wide as I could before - there is some tugging on the gums where they sewed them up.
I still wonder whether the teeth really needed to be removed at all. I mean people have been getting wisdom teeth for a million years or so and what was the big problem?
Yank yank yank yank tug push yank wiggle wiggle.
Yank yank uhhhh shove yank yank wiggle.
Yank shove wiggle wiggle yank yank yank.
Fuckin’ A. Glad that’s over with.
Now I just gotta wait for the hole in my jaw to heal. :silenced:
How much does wisdom tooth extraction generally cost in Taiwan?
it’s free if you have national health insurance. take that, “first world” USA.
Not quite, but almost. I had one removed recently, as described above. I believe I paid NT$200 (and used my national health insurance).
Glad it went well, MC.
To those who question the horror stories it’s really quite simple, at least in my case. Local does not work very well on me. I have to get two to three times the normal number of needles in the mouth as is usual and I still feel pain very acutely let me tell you.
If you respond well to local then the process will be relatively easy. If you don’t it is torture and you will be begging to be knocked out. I wouldn’t go for any serious dental work ever again without getting put under. And I have had 11 teeth extracted and 2 put back in. The last thing I had done was a bridge which took 4 hours the first time and 3 the second. Had to have my jaw drilled as the root of one incisor has fused to it. Yes, fused, so after cracking the tooth to extract as much as possible the dentist then had to drill the stump left on my jaw until it was smooth. Now do YOU want to be awake while that is going on?
My strategy to overcome an extreme intolerance to dentistry was to get the work done in Thailand, but only after the dentist provided me with a script for valium. Three root canals and two crowns performed with me droolling away in la la land.
The odd thing about valium scripts in Thailand is that the pharmacists get it, read it, hand you your pills and hand back the script, which of course means you simply move onto the next shop and have it filled all over again.
HG
So, I just got my national health card and I want some dental work done. I think I need two cavities filled. My real question is about my wisdom teeth. I still have all four of them in my mouth. I have no pain and the last dentist who looked at them said that at some time they should come out, but if there is no pain there is no big rush. Ok. The thing is, my upper tooth on the left side is out, and it has a big hole in it. I didn’t get it filled last time because I figured it would be a waste of time since I’m going to have it removed. That was a year ago. There is no pain or anything, but I want it out. Can I just have one wisdom tooth taken out? What is the cost for this type of procedure? I should probably ask a dentist these questions, and I will, but I want to see what the venerable forumosa community thinks. Any thoughts?
Implants and crowns are not covered by the insurance so those will cost anywhere from 30,000NT up. Check with your dentist to make sure.
[quote=“Byshguy”]So, I just got my national health card and I want some dental work done. I think I need two cavities filled. My real question is about my wisdom teeth. I still have all four of them in my mouth. I have no pain and the last dentist who looked at them said that at some time they should come out, but if there is no pain there is no big rush. Ok. The thing is, my upper tooth on the left side is out, and it has a big hole in it. I didn’t get it filled last time because I figured it would be a waste of time since I’m going to have it removed. That was a year ago. There is no pain or anything, but I want it out. Can I just have one wisdom tooth taken out? What is the cost for this type of procedure? I should probably ask a dentist these questions, and I will, but I want to see what the venerable forumosa community thinks. Any thoughts?[/quote]I can’t remember how much it was to get mine taken out. A few hundred NT, maybe. It definitely needed it for some reason–I think it was pressing on the teeth in front or something. Perhaps if the dentist reckons it’s just optional to get it done then it costs more. I don’t know.
[quote=“Dr. McCoy”]Implants and crowns are not covered by the insurance so those will cost anywhere from 30,000NT up. Check with your dentist to make sure.[/quote]For someone who would normally get a filling I’d say it’s well worth considering getting an inlay instead. They’re about 7,000 NT each, but they last for ages if done well and if you you have good dental hygiene. Much longer than fillings, in my experience.
Someone wrote earlier here that you need to get both teeth on the side taken out. I would rather just have the one that is out already taken out. That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe I shouldn’t be so lazy and just look online myself. But where’s the fun in that
[quote=“Byshguy”]Someone wrote earlier here that you need to get both teeth on the side taken out. I would rather just have the one that is out already taken out. That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe I shouldn’t be so lazy and just look online myself. But where’s the fun in that [/quote]Not sure about that. I think I had each of my four wisdom teeth taken out at different times. Not all together, anyway.
Probably is worth doing a bit of research at some point, though.
It depends in which direction they grow or if they are causing problems. Mine were growing against the other teeth so they had to come out. It was done all in one go under full anesthetic and I had to spend a week at the hospital (many moons ago back home). Nowadays it’s more common to do it at the dentist, one by one or one side during one session, and you can go home afterwards.
Anyway, just ask a dentist for advise, he will probably want to take an x-ray to make a proper diagnosis.
So… I’d been told by several dentists (two in the US and one here in Taiwan) that I “must” have my severly impacted lower two wisdom teeth removed and they wanted to remove the top ones too while they were at it ( because of infection risk or something like that ). My dentist told me he couldn’t do it at his clinic so he gave me a referral to China Medical’s oral surgery department in the Fujian Medical building in Taichung. This afternoon I went there to have the two on my left side extracted (upper and impacted lower) under local anesthesia.
What a frustrating experience! I got the feeling that the dentist was a little nervous to be handing a “foreigner”. After the anesthetic was injected, he got out the forceps and started pulling on my upper left wisdom tooth, pretty hard but it didn’t hurt. I had my iPod going and was feeling ok, but all of a sudden I felt nauseous and cold and dizzy and just pretty crappy overall. The dentist asked me if I was ok, and when I didn’t answer, he took off the “thing” they had put over my head to cover my eyes and I guess I wasn’t very responsive. When I figured out what was going on, they had taken my blood pressure and it had dropped pretty low I guess and given them a scare (59/30 -something). It came back up pretty quickly, though, and I felt better after a few minutes and wanted to keep going, but the dentist just looked at me with big round eyes and said “no, I won’t finish today!” They sent me to the emergency room on a stretcher (very embarrasing) even though by now I was feeling better and better and I kept telling them “I’m ok!, I’m ok!” I laid in the China Medical ER for over an hour while they did blood tests and took my blood pressure and did an EKG for “standard procedure”. I felt it was all unnecessary but I complied anyway.
Anyway, they will be reschedule my extraction to have all four removed at once under general anesthesia. The national health insurance will cover it completely since it is now “medically necessary”. I’m kind of nervous, since I haven’t had surgery in 15 years (appendectomy when I was 12). I have to go around with a half yanked out tooth until then since the oral surgeon loosened it so much and it is very sore and wiggles when I drink water. Icky!
Has anybody else had surgery, or wisdom tooth removal at this hospital, China Medical in Taichung? My oral surgeon obviously is very careful (as in sending me to the ER when my BP dropped). But it would be comforting to hear other people say they’ve had a good experience at this hospital because today, for me, was not so great and I’m not looking forward to going back. If anybody has a bad experience story about this hospital, please don’t post. At least not until after my surgery. 
Thanks!
I can’t speak to the hospital, but I can give a general encouraging word as I had all four of my impacted wisdom teeth out last September (and I’m in my mid-40s) and had absolutely no problems whatsoever (under a general anesthetic). So don’t believe the horror stories unless, and until, you need to.