Much thanks to Stephanie for stepping in last week while I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth yanked.
Our third set of molars, nicknamed "wisdom teeth" since they generally surface between ages 17-25, were useful to our Stone Age ancestors who had wider jaws, coarser diets and rougher lives. These teeth helped them chew easier and helped ease the loss of other teeth during the course of their lives.
Flash forward to now and -surprise- these teeth can cause problems for some people. If your wisdom teeth are impacted, they can rub up against other teeth and cause bad breath, your bite to be misaligned, an abscess of the tooth or gums and even gum disease.
I never had any problems with my wisdom teeth, but when I was at the dentist last month, she noticed an abscess forming in the gums of one of the impacted teeth. She was concerned that the abscess could be malignant and I was sold on getting all four of my wisdom teeth removed.
Luckily, the lab results said the abscess was benign, but I did suffer one post-extraction problem—dry sockets. While that has not been fun at all, I’ll recover and I’m happy that I got my wisdom teeth removed so there are no future complications.
Have you had your wisdom teeth removed?