This past Wednesday I just had 13 teeth removed and I'm 48. I had three that were broken off like you describe; one was an anterior bicuspid and two were molars. I was actually more worried about how much effort it would take to extract the (what I thought of as "intact") molars than to extract the broken ones or the looser ones.
I have stitches in three places; the anterior region, because they did an aveloplasty/ectomy or whatever it is they call it, which is a typical procedure; and in an upper molar area and in both sides of the lower molar area. I guess she had to do some cutting.
I have been keeping on top of any bad pain by taking pain medication every six to eight hours as prescribed. As it turns out, I only had to take one of the opiods; the rest of the time I've been doing fine on Ibuprofen 800. In fact, a few times I just took two my OTC Ibuprofen 200s and have done just fine with that.
This is day four post-op and almost all of the swelling has gone from out of my face. I had an immediate denture placed and that helped keep the swelling to a minimum. I go tomorrow morning to have them do a slight adjustment, because the occlusion is off just a bit, but that's not unusual when doing an immediate denture.
I didn't have oral sedation; I had IV sedation. The procedure, I was told, was to take approximiately an hour 15, hour 30, and, to me, it seemed like the whole thing was over with in five, maybe 10 minutes total.
I wasn't aware of anything except toward the end when I was "waking up." (In quotes because you're not actually asleep, but it seems as though you are, because you just aren't aware, really, of anything that's going on while it's going on. The Valium in the IV "cocktail" really does what it's supposed to do! It's amazing. It has an amnesic affect and I'm not sure how, but seems to have this effect WHILE the procedure is going on. I don't remember anything about it except, as I said, toward the end I remember seeing her hand in front of my face with the thread as she was taking a couple of stitches and I was thinking, "Wow; she's done the aveloplasty already?" Next thing I knew I was coming around again.
I wasn't dizzy at all, wasn't nauseous, just groggy, and I had to have a bit of assistance getting from the dental chair into a wheelchair and then into my son-in-law's car.
As far as nerve damage or any of that, when I read that on the release form, I thought, OMG! There's a risk of "this, this and this and this" happening?" But, as with anything else, there are always associated risks and a part of the waiver has to do with their insurance and CYing their A, too, if ya know what I mean. ;-)
Anyhoo, as I said, I had 13 removed, I'm even older than you are and I'm doing perfectly fine. I hardly even had any bleeding at all! When I got home I threw away the gauze they had used right after the surgery, and haven't had to use any sense. And barely any spitting either.
So, I'm sure you'll do just fine! About the only thing I can suggest is, if you have pain, take your meds at the first sign of the pain; don't wait to start hurting very badly, because it's easier to stay ahead of the pain than it is to try to get rid of it once it's there. But you should be just fine in two, three days, tops, I would bet.
:-D
