Wisdom Teeth Extraction-My Experience Update

So when I left off from my last post I was suffering through an odd series of fluctuations in pain in my right jaw. The pain would be dull and would often extent up towards my ear, where it would almost feel like a dull ear infection. This pain would become worse if I was laying down, and oftentimes I would wake up in the middle of the night in pain, and end up spitting out some rust colored muck in the morning. I would pop a few advil, and off I would go on my day-trying to ignore the continuous throbbing.

Today I went back into the oral surgeon's office for a scheduled after-procedure checkup, and after examining my mouth, promptly stated I had "drainage" (their code word for "infection spooge" it seems) and that I should do the following to prevent from getting dry sockets-which I learned were breakdowns of the blood clots that are far more painful than what I was experiencing. He suggested that I take a syringe with a wide, non needled tip, and suck up a concoction of half listerine, and half hydrogen peroxide. Then I was to squirt the infection massacring juice directly into the hole where my wisdom tooth once was a few times during the day to rid myself of the lingering infection and thus the pain.

This so far has worked far better than the pain medications they gave me, and I would wholeheartedly asking your surgeon if this is something you can do earlier on in the healing process so you do not have to suffer through days of unnecessary pain due to a small infection.

So as of now, I am mostly pain free (the gums around the hole are a bit sore due to being manipulated by the syringe, but that seems to be expected).

Oh, and my hypothesis on why it would be painful right after I wake up? Typically, people produce less saliva while they sleep, and saliva is somewhat effective as an antiseptic material. Hence, when I slept, the bacteria causing the infection had an orgy, and spewed harmful metabolic toxins and proliferated all over the place, mixing their trash with blood in the clot and giving me the spit of morning liquid rust.

I have a second follow-up on thursday. The surgeon seemed confident that the infection would be mostly if not fully resolved by then.