My Nasty and Enjoyable Wisdom Tooth Extraction and Surgery Experiences at National Dental Centre in SingaporeSo on my annual dental check up last year, the dentist had an X-ray done to check my teeth, and it turns out that I was advised to have wisdom tooth extraction and surgery done on all four of my wisdom teeth. My upper left and right wisdom teeth grew out nicely, but my bottom left and right wisdom teeth were impacted, which means they were growing out in a direction that would collide with neighboring teeth. For normal wisdom teeth, you can have them extracted normally by the dentist with pliers. But for impacted wisdom teeth, you have to undergo wisdom tooth surgery which involves the dentist drilling the wisdom tooth down the center before using force to break the tooth into parts and removing the parts one by one (sounds scary, but it should be painless). Apparently wisdom teeth have no real purpose and leaving them there your mouth just makes brushing and flossing difficult, and occasionally your biting and chewing motions would cause ulcerations on your gums due to how far back the teeth are in your mouth. I did this dental checkup at a private dental clinic near my house, but the cost of the wisdom tooth extraction and surgery offered there was too high in my opinion. So what I did was make an appointment to have another dental checkup at Bedok Singhealth Polyclinic, and there I was given a referral letter and also an appointment date to have my wisdom teeth checked out at National Dental Centre (located at Singapore General Hospital - nearest MRT is Outram Park, about 10 mins walking distance). The reason why I went to the Polyclinic is because if you have a referral letter from them, you can get a government subsidy on wisdom tooth extraction and surgery at National Dental Centre, and the savings are significant. I used my Medisave to fully pay for the procedures - no cash was needed - it cost around S$600+ for one upper wisdom tooth extraction and one bottom wisdom tooth surgery. So in total, all four wisdom teeth cost me around only S$1300, as compared to much higher costs at private dental clinics. I ended up getting my upper two wisdom teeth extracted and the bottom two impacted wisdom teeth surgically-removed at National Dental Centre. I did this on two occasions: the first time on 17th Nov 2016, I underwent wisdom teeth extraction and surgery on the two wisdom teeth on the right side of my mouth. The second time on 6th Jan 2017, I underwent wisdom teeth extraction and surgery on the two wisdom teeth on the left side of my mouth. I chose to split it up to two occasions so that I could have one side of my mouth still available to chew food while the other side was recovering from surgery. This strategy worked out well. During the first time on 17th Nov 2016, because the dentist called Dr Rahul didn't inject enough local anesthesia into my gums, I actually felt the pain when the dentist drilled my bottom right wisdom tooth. It didn't help that that wisdom tooth was located near a nerve, so the pain was amplified! MAJOR OUCH! The needle used for injecting the anesthesia is HUGE by the way. The injections (I remember it being around four times) is actually the most painful part of the surgery. After the injections, the dentist left me there on the chair to rest and wait to let the medicine take effect. The numbness is quite an annoying feeling because you end up not being able to talk properly for a few hours and your tongue and lips feel swollen and weird.
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June 2023
AuthorHi I’m Milton Goh, I'm 30 years old and i'm a blogger who writes about Christianity, Parenting, Life Lessons that I learn from Movies/Shows, and Lifestyle. |