- If possible, it's recommended to have someone to accompany/fetch u to the clinic because the sedation will make you drowsy & unable to care for yourself after the surgery. Your companion can take care of you & note down the instructions to be followed in your post-surgery recovery.
- Eat before your surgery to avoid low blood pressure/fainting (also, too high of blood pressure level is also dangerous when you go through anesthesia).
- After the extraction or surgery, give your body some rest & take a nap as long as you can until the numbness fades (numbness usually lasts for 4 hours, especially the tongue). Sleeping stops you from accidentally hurting your own tongue without knowing because it's still numb & can't feel anything. When you sleep/for a few hours after the surgery, make sure to bite on the cotton gauze at your best to stop the bleeding & change it as frequent as you can (I've changed 4 times until it stops bleeding). You can always ask for more cotton gauze replacement just in case you bleed a lot
Get yourself some dessert for your post-surgery recovery. Cold food, especially yoghurt, ice cream, cake & milk tea makes you and your gums happy (soothes it like how ice pack works, just that this is directly to the wound). Make sure your ice cream and cake is easy to chew with your palate (roof of your mouth) because you won't be able to use your teeth/open or close your mouth any bigger than a grape size due to your swollen cheeks & gums.
You can only eat watery food for almost a week, especially when it gets more swollen day by day from 2nd day until 5th-7th day. Or to be exact, you can only DRINK your food, because your mouth won't be able to open any bigger than a tablespoon... Make sure your food, like congee is warm, NOT HOT, as it may burn your wound. I usually left it till almost cold, just in case. Also, you can actually eat fish, but you'll have to squash it into congee form, like baby's food (DO TAKE NOTE WHETHER THERE'S BONE BEFORE YOU CONSUME).
- Try not to sneeze or do any sucking motion (like using a straw) for the first 48 hours, it might tear open the wound or disrupt blood clot.
- Sleep on an elevated pillow to prevent squishing your cheeks to the pillow in your sleep & causing any pain. I placed another pillow below the contour pillow that I usually sleep on for 4 days (until my cheeks are not that swollen anymore).
- Try to brush your teeth on the night of your surgery if you can (don't be like me), try not to stay too close to the wound as it'll disrupt the blood clot or remove it from your wound, causing pain & dry socket (or further inflammation). However, DO NOT GARGLE vigorously, just rinse off your toothpaste with water gently. I didn’t brush my teeth on 1st day after surgery because it’s too swollen, but I did in the next morning onwards. Start using the mouthwash/warm salt water only on the 2nd day, but again, just rinse until your stitches are removed (in my opinion).
Food will sometimes stuck to the stitches & hard to get it off if you ate sticky food, especially porridge/congee. Try not to play with the stitches with your tongue & thinking it’s food residue, you’ll accidentally pull your stitches & cause pain to your wound (I did at least once a day. LOL DUN EVEN TRY IT). Instead, patiently rinse your mouth with water very gently a few times to flush the particles out every time after your meal & make sure it's completely clean before going to bed.
- For ice pack, it's better to use it the earlier the better once you see the swelling happen, as it'll speed up the healing. I did it only on 4th day, which is a bit late, because I thought it’ll go away itself, but now, considering how swollen it is already on the 2nd day before the peak swelling day (3rd day), it's better to treat it earlier.
If you want to keep your teeth (don't ask me the reason, it's simply just to be remembered that you once had 4 freaking wisdom teeth), it's better to soak in water straight away on the day it got extracted. I soaked for 2 days overnight & changed the solution twice (I use contact lens multi-purpose solution). Then, keep it in an airtight container & soak with some solution.
- The wound opening is still quite huge & tends to have food stuck in it and between the Molar teeth no matter how many times I gargle it (I start to gargle only after my stitches are removed & before that I only do rinsing). Sometimes even if I brush my teeth & gargle before bed till there's no more food particles coming out, I still woke up with more food residues in the morning too when I gargle again... (literally became a hamster that has food stuffed in their cheeks 🐹 lol). This happened until the end of 1st week of stitches removal.
- 1st week after stitches removal, the Molar teeth (the largest teeth at the back) is still quite weak, both upper and lower part too. When I eat very chewy food, my jaw gets very tired & the molar teeth hurts a little, like they're shaky & almost gonna fall off. I still couldn't bite hard food, like chicken's cartilage/soft bone & crab's shell.
- 2nd week after stitches removal, only the top Molar teeth are feeling weak. I can chew better now, but have to gargle every time after I eat as the food will still stuck to the extraction part. Also, I can eat anything I want, including crab (not those super hard shell too, only the small ones), but it still takes some time to chew the food off completely (especially those meat with more connective tissues).
