One of my goals while I am staying in KL is not only to work and make money as much as possible, but also to do everything I wanted to do that I either kept delaying or just didn’t have a good opportunity to do back there in Jakarta. And now since I will be staying in KL for quite a long before I plan to continue my journey, it is the best time to fix my underbite. Moreover I am considered quite late to get braces at this age. Even more if I delay it further. So it is now or never!
I went to a dental center named Q&M following my friend’s recommendation who is also doing braces. She goes to Taipan branch but I went to Mont Kiara branch because it’s closer to my home plus there are many Korean restaurants and shops in this area :). On my first consultation my dentist checked my teeth and suggested me to take out my wisdom teeth. This is to be done before I start doing braces.
But why?
Wisdom teeth and human evolution
Generations ago, people ate more raw food. Those raw food were harder to chew and the wisdom teeth helped to grind the food. But now most of us eat food cooked. Then we also have many dining utensils to cut down the food into bitesize pieces even before entering our mouth. Spoon, fork, and knive are on our left and right hands.
Aside from that people’s faces also get slimmer and rounder. Hey, we even favor V-shaped face nowadays. The change in face shape makes wisdom teeth causing problem to other teeth because there is not enough room to fit in.
Health-wise, the wisdom teeth are the ones at the very back of our mouth. And it is very difficult to brush and clean these teeth. So it’s prone to cavity and other problems.
In my case, my lower wisdom teeth is not coming out perfectly. The right tooth specifically is covered by gum. And aside from those health-related issues, the lower part is needed to make up rooms to pull the teeth back (remember I got underbite case).
Wisdom teeth extraction
How many teeth should I take out? It’s all four she said. And guess what, two of them requires surgery. Who doesn’t get sensitive with the word surgery? So do I. However I somehow think it’s gonna be fun. Fun as in experiencing how it is like to get a surgery for the first time in my life. As long as it is safe of course.
Before surgery they would do an x-ray scan to plan the procedure. After the surgery it would take about two three days recovery.
Today is my appointed date for the surgery. I first thought they going to take it all four today. Then if both my left and right sides of the mouth are swollen, how do I eat? Turns out they only take one tooth at a time. What a relief.
There are a lot of things going on during the surgery and there will also more things going on post-surgery. And I’m going to write my experiences in the next article. I’m going to put my cold pack and give it a rest now.
Stay tuned!