When I left the dentist, I asked if I could have my extracted wisdom tooth.  Why? Whynot?

They gave it a quick, light cleaning and then gave it to me in a little zippy bag.  I definitely had to clean it more once I got home; there was still blood and pieces of flesh stuck to it (gross, I know).  I can’t really get all the bits and pieces off.

I find this kind of stuff cool. How often do you get to not only see but handle one of your teeth?  And this isn’t some little baby tooth–it’s a full-grown adult molar!

Anyway, for anyone else that is fascinated by this kind of stuff, here’s a couple of pics.  The dentist commented on how I had longer-than-normal roots and that they were curved, which I guess isn’t a normal thing.  I also noticed a weird pearl-like ball growing out of the side of my tooth.  I wonder what that could be?

Here's a look at the size of it.

What is that pearl-like ball on my root?

Looks like the roots of my tooth were fused together.

You can see in the last picture that my roots were fused together.  Wisdom teeth usually have three roots and it looks my front two were fused together with the back one.  This was actually a good thing in my case because it made for a simple, quick extraction.  Well, relatively speaking.  It still sucked.  Getting the area numb was the worse part because they actually have to inject you with the anesthesia using a very long, curved needle.  The needle goes in very deep, needs to be moved around to get to the right spot, and is put in numerous spots!  Not fun.  Then we waited 10 minutes for it to get me numb, during which time they gave me a consent form to sign plus a post-op pamphlet to peruse.

I wish they hadn’t!  I was pretty calm and relaxed going in, but once I read the consent form, I got a bit scared.  It mentioned all these rare possibilities that I had to acknowledge and consent to such as accidentally cutting into my sinus cavities, leaving bone in, jaw problems, permanent loss of sensation, infection, additional surgery, etc.  Things I never even thought about suddently raced through my head, and then the post-op instructions had all this talk about pain, bleeding, and dry sockets.  Ugh.  I was preparing myself for the worst.

But it wasn’t bad.  After some banging and what felt like piercing of my numb tooth, the dentist took these huge, thick tweezer-like instrument, clamped down on my tooth, applied a lot of elbow grease and yanked it out. Plonk!  It was over in 5 minutes.

Then I had to bite down on some gauze to soak up any bleeding (and keep biting down on it for the next 45 mintues).  I got a prescription for some painkillers in case I experience any, extra gauze (which I haven’t had to use), and instructions to not eat any solids today and to rinse with salt water tonight and then 5 times throughout the day tomorrow.  All and all, it wasn’t bad.  I had some applesauce, two cups of pudding, and some rice porridge with eggs this evening.  I think I can go a few days without any serious chewing.

Well, I better!

Update: After some research, I found out that the little white pearl on my root is known as an “enamel pearl.” From Wikipedia:

An enamel pearl is a condition of teeth where enamel is found on locations where enamel is not supposed to be, such as on a root surface. They are found usually in the area between roots, which is called a furcation, of molars.

The reason why it’s so bright and shiny is that it’s made of enamel, the same material as your exposed tooth, instead of cementum, which is what the root it is on is made of. It’s very interesting to see how shiny and polished looking enamel is compared to cementum.

Notice how much shinier the pearl and tooth is compared to the root.

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