Am very afraid of doing something wrong / having a lot of pain post-oral surgery
Sometime within the next month or two, I have to get 11 teeth
extracted by surgery (all at once, on one day, they told me). This
includes all 4 wisdom teeth as well as 7 others that are extremely decayed. I have read about the
experience & post-surgery on-line in a variety of sites and they all
mention lots of instructions, most of which I believe I am going to
have a hard time following. Stuff about changing gauze pads every 30
minutes (I don't know how to position these properly), for instance.
Also there was mention about that I'd need to continuously have ice
packs on my face. It seems the list of Dos & Don'ts is rather large &
I'm concerned that if I am unable to follow the instructions to the
letter, I will have a lot of pain, complications, or permanent damage
or other problems as a result of the affected areas (of which there
will be many) not healing properly if I can't accurately follow all
directions given to me. They have to go into the bone in some of these
areas, like the 4 impacted wisdoms.
I am also afraid that I will not be able to deal with whatever
physical pain I will have for the length of time post-surgery. I keep
hearing times not in minutes or hours, but in DAYS (as in 3 to 5
straight days), with the small possibility that it could even be weeks
before the pain is fully gone. Is there anything I can do to be 100 %
certain that I will not feel any pain in the days/weeks following
surgery? Are we that primitive health-care-wise that little can truly
be done about it? I understand that pain is a natural fact of life,
but what does one do when they really CAN NOT deal with it? Is there
something I can take that can either make me sleep it off for 16+
hours at a time? Would that work? Is there anyone I can call, anywhere
I can go, or anything I can do if I for instance wake up in bad pain
at 2 a.m. on day 2, or if for that matter, I can't sleep at all &
remain awake for the whole 4+ days straight?
What would happen if I OD'd (or took way over what I'm told to take)
on the painkillers I'm given? Will I die or have some type of
permanent damage?
Has anyone here had that many teeth extracted at once & can chime in on if I am blowing the anxiety out of proportion or if it's completely justified given how much that's to get done that day?
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