I feel like I'm being forced to undergo general anesthesia

I am having all four of my wisdom teeth removed on Monday. I'm not looking forward to it. Originally, when I went in for my consultation, I didn't mention to the doctor that I didn't want to be put to sleep for the procedure. And of course, that is what he recommended. Instead of saying something, I dumbly agreed and scheduled the appointment.

The more I thought about it, the more freaked out I got at the prospect of undergoing sedation of some kind. I don't have any fear of the actual procedure, aside from the sedation. A few days ago, I called the office up and explained my hesitation. I spoke to a nurse in the office, and after talking, she assured me that it was fine and we could get my treatment plan changed, easy peasy. She then handed me back to the scheduler. And that's where the trouble began.

The scheduler basically told me that we'd have to entirely reschedule my appointment, because my current appointment is in the morning, and these appointments are reserved for people getting put under for the procedure, because they have to fast. The next available procedure isn't for several weeks.

The trouble is that I work retail and I had to fight tooth and nail to get time off this upcoming week, so I absolutely cannot reschedule! I explained this to the woman, and she basically kept saying the same things over and over again, that the morning appointments are reserved for people getting put under. We were going in circles!

And then she decided that she needed to try to convince me that I really wanted to undergo this procedure under sedation! After I went through all of this with a nurse, who understood my stance, I was a bit upset that I wasn't being listened to.

Eventually I realized we weren't getting anywhere, so I agreed to keep the appointment and hung up. Now I'm in the same place I was before. I really don't even want to go in for this appointment on Monday. I haven't slept or eaten well in two weeks because I'm so terrified of having this done!

I'm tempted to call back and speak directly with the doctor, but I'm also extremely shy and I know I've already made a fool of myself with this office once, with all the calling the other day.

Perhaps you can speak to the nurse again? She sounds like she would be a good liaison/advocate who can either speak to the doctor or let you talk to him. The scheduler sounds SO inflexible, not to mention she has no right to try and dictate your treatment plan. The doctor might be more flexible if you speak directly to him/her.

I don't know if this has happened yet but if it were me I would ring back and speak to the nurse you spoke to before and explain the problem you had with the other person when trying to change the appointment to none sedation or speak to the dentist. They wouldn't want you to agree to something you are so much against.

Don't be sedated if you are so afraid of it and don't want it, it won't do you any good. No point creating dental phobias where there isn't one. It would be a shame to put you off over something that isn't needed. Don't be told what to do by this person that is so rigid they sound as if they will break if things don't go their way.

Stand your ground, it will make no difference to the dentist preforming the procedure is you aren't bothered by it.

So, I thought I should update on what has happened since I posted.

I ended up calling and speaking directly with the doctor, who I thought would be able to help me out. Boy, was I wrong. He basically just told me all the things that the scheduler said, almost verbatim. I did explain my situation to him, my fears about the sedation, the scheduling issues, etc, but none of it was any good. He reiterated that the morning appointments were for general anesthesia only because using local only would take longer.

That freaked me out even more, because I started getting a different image of this office in my head, one in which the appointments are crammed back to back with no wiggle room so he can fit in as many as he possibly can, an assembly line of cattle.

Anyway, after going back and forth with the doctor for some time, and getting quite emotional about it, I told him I'd keep the appointment, hung up, and immediately started bawling uncontrollably. And that's when I realized that it wasn't worth it. If this was going to cause me so much agony before I was even in the office, it was not going to be a good experience.

I immediately called the office back to cancel the appointment. The woman told me that the office was closed and that I'd have to wait until Monday morning to cancel or reschedule. I did tell her the appointment was on Monday, but apparently she was just an answering service and couldn't do anything.

So I called back as soon as the office's website said they were open on Monday morning. I ended up speaking to the same answering service lady, who again said that I needed to call back when they were open in an hour. I did, at which point I was put on hold for some time to wait for the scheduler to be done with another patient. Eventually the same nurse from earlier got on the line to help me out. I explained that I was cancelling and needed to reschedule. She told me that before we could reschedule, she needed to speak with the doctor and that they'd get back in touch with me.

They never called me back.

Now, I'm sure the doctor probably thinks I'm just going to be a pain in his butt, or that I'm going to flake out on him again, but really? Good riddance! I feel a bit like I've dodged a bullet.

I ended up calling my dentist, who referred me to another oral surgeon who she said is very good at performing oral surgery under local only. I had a consult with him yesterday and feel really good about it. He didn't pressure me into choosing general anesthesia, but was also very honest about his concerns regarding my teeth (the top two should be easy to remove while the bottom two are going to require some bone removal). The office gave me two separate quotes for each method and told me that I could think it over and call them back when I knew what I wanted to do.

I'm still leaning towards local only, but I feel like I want to ask the doctor a few more questions to be sure.

By the way, I rescheduled for March 20th, which it turns out will work perfectly with my work schedule. I also talked to my bosses and they said they totally understand if I need to take extra time to recover.

So it seems that all has worked out, thank goodness!

Okay, another update, now that I've had my surgery.

I had my wisdom teeth out on March 20th, so it's been about a week and a half since then. First, I want to say that the surgery was a smashing success!

I opted to stay awake for the procedure, which was what I had originally wanted anyway. I don't regret that decision at all!

I was a bit nervous when I went into the office on Friday morning. I wasn't exactly nervous about the procedure, but more because of people's reactions when I told them I wasn't having general anesthesia. Pretty much everyone freaked out! Looking back, I realized they probably had that reaction because they were all knocked out for their own wisdom tooth removal and couldn't imagine being awake for it.

I had all four removed. Well, three and a half. The top two were coming in pretty straight, but hadn't really come into my mouth yet. Both the bottom ones were impacted. The left one in particular was going to be pretty nasty. My doctor opted to get a 3D scan of my jaw because he was concerned that the tooth was pretty close to the alveolar nerve that runs through your jaw. I'm so glad he did.

The scan revealed that the nerve was running directly between the roots of my tooth. Not only that, but the tooth had three roots instead of the normal two! Obviously this was going to make it way more difficult to remove.

My doctor was concerned about causing nerve damage in my jaw, so what he ended up doing on that tooth was something called a coronectomy. This means that he removed just the crown of the tooth and left the roots in my jaw. Obviously the risk here is that the roots could become infected at some point and have to be removed anyway, but he doesn't think that will happen. The roots are pretty far back into my jaw. They're really not close to the rest of my teeth at all. The doctor said the hole where the rest of the tooth was should fill in with bone, which will help protect the roots as well.

I'm very glad I went to him! The first doctor I went to was going to perform the surgery having only viewed a 2D image of my teeth! Talk about not having all the information!

The actual surgery was super easy! I went into the office, nervous (as I said). Even though I wasn't having general anesthesia, they took my blood pressure and clipped a heart rate monitor on my finger. Obviously my pulse and bp were high, but hearing the doctor explain the procedure helped calm me. The nurse was also making jokes to put me at ease. She knows where I work, so she was joking about my job! It really helped.

Once my heart rate and blood pressure came down a bit, they started to numb my mouth. I can't remember exactly how many injections I got, because I didn't actually feel them all. I'd say about eight, maybe? One in the lower gums on the right and left, one in the upper gums right and left, one in each cheek, and two in the roof of my mouth near the back. I think that's all of them. He started on my right side, did the roof of my mouth, then did the other side.

The ones in the roof of my mouth were the hardest. The first one wasn't bad, but it basically numbs the back of your throat and to me, it almost felt like that upper area was swollen, or like there was something stuck back there. So, when he went to numb the same area on the upper left, I started to gag! I was a little embarrassed about it, but he reassured me that it was a normal reaction. He let me sit for a minute or so to try and get used to the strange feeling. Then he tried to numb that spot again. Eventually he got that spot numbed and I was fine after that.

Honestly, the numbing was the worst part of the entire procedure. The rest was super easy.

He started with my upper right tooth. I was completely numb, so I couldn't really tell what he was doing. Everyone always talks about how they use extreme pressure and that it's super disturbing, but to me, there really wasn't much pressure at all and I didn't even know he had the thing out until he said "First one's done!". That was after about three minutes. I then realized that the wad of gauze the nurse had put in the back of my mouth was probably to catch blood and tooth bits when they actually got the tooth out.

Next he did my lower right tooth. Again, I couldn't feel much of anything. I knew that he was going to have to drill this one out and that the tooth would probably be taken in pieces and the doctor didn't disappoint. Again, everyone makes a huge deal about the drill and how disturbing it is. I didn't find it bad at all. The drill is no louder than the sonic scaler some dentists use. In fact, I found it actually less annoying than a sonic scaler because the pitch wasn't so ear-splitting!

I'll admit that the smell that accompanies them using the drill isn't so nice. It's not gag-worthy, but it is a bit gross. I ended up just not breathing through my nose whenever the doctor switched the drill on and that was fine for me. I heard my tooth break, but it was more like a popping sound than an earth-shattering, horrible sound that most people make it out to be.

Again with this tooth, I didn't even realize the tooth was out until way after it was done. At one point in time, I opened my eyes (I had originally decided it would be best to keep my eyes closed throughout, but I opened them a few times out of curiosity) and saw a hand with what looked like twine reaching in my mouth. For a second, I stupidly thought he was going to try to take my tooth out with string, but eventually realized he was putting stitches in, which meant the tooth was already gone!

The upper left was next. It came out just as easily as the upper right. After a few minutes of prodding, it was out. This time, I knew it was about to come out when a wad of gauze was placed in the back of my throat.

That left the coronectomy tooth. The dreaded lower right. This tooth definitely took the longest to remove and required the most drilling, which is understandable. Again, I didn't find it at all disturbing or gross. At one point, there was a cold liquid running down my throat which may have been blood, but I couldn't taste it, so I don't know.

When he actually split the crown of the tooth away from the roots, the doctor told me I'd hear a little "pop". That's exactly what it was. A little "pop" again, just like in the lower right. After that, he drilled a bit more, probably to smooth the edges of what tooth was left in my jaw. Eventually, stitches were placed in my gum and it was all over.

I had my iPod with me, and from beginning to end, the procedure took 38 minutes and 33 seconds (the entirety of Beethoven's Egmont Overture, the first two movements of Dvorak's Piano Quintet and about a minute and a half of the third movement).

After everything was done, I had another x-ray done to make sure everything looked good. It did. Then I was given three prescriptions (amoxicillin, ibuprofin, and hydrocodone), my post operative instructions, some chapstick, and extra gauze.

In total, I spent a little more than an hour in the office.

Shortly after leaving the office, the local began to wear off. The pain wasn't too bad for me though. The top teeth didn't hurt at all. They never did. The bottom right didn't really hurt until several days later when food started to get stuck in it (despite me rinsing as instructed). Even then, it was only a mild irritation. The bottom left one hurt a little initially, but by the next day, didn't hurt at all. On a pain scale, I'd say my pain level never went over a 3.5.

I did swell up a bit the day after my surgery on my left side, and eventually had a little bruising. This was despite me icing pretty religiously after I got home. I expected that though, and I've definitely had worse swelling from other things.

My jaw was pretty stiff for about five days after the surgery. I had a hard time opening my mouth too widely, which made getting food in there a challenge. Using heat packs on my jaw helped relieve the stiffness, so I did that often.

Having gone through this whole ordeal, I've learned a few things. I can see why people could be disturbed by being awake through their tooth removal, but everyone is different. As I said, for me, it was a piece of cake and I didn't find anything they did to me to be horrific or traumatizing. Your mileage may vary.

The other thing I learned is that you can't listen too much to other people's experiences because everyone is different. No two experiences are going to be the same. Not to mention, the only wisdom tooth stories you tend to hear are the horrible ones! You never hear the good ones!

I'm so glad I had my surgery done this way. I felt great after the surgery. I had very little pain, which was easily managed by ibuprofin. And, I didn't have to spend the whole day recovering from general anesthesia, which in my case, probably would have been worse than recovering from the actual extractions!

Trust your instincts! If you don't want to be awake, then don't. If you do, then do it! You probably know better than anybody else how much you can handle and where your limits are.

Hi I am so glad that things went so well for you It is a good job you cancelled the other dentist, I don't think the outcome would have been so good for you.

Good on you for getting the dentist you got to do the removal. It just goes to show if things don't feel right then they aren't and don't ever feel pressured to do something you really don't want to do.

Thank you for taking the time to write about your experience and the healing process.