Dental Surgery – Should I Go Through With It?
Something that most people don’t think about til later in their lives when they grow their wisdom teeth is dental surgery. Other than wisdom teeth removal, the next most common purpose for surgery is cosmetic enhancement. These operations don’t come cheap. Unless you were absolutely convinced that your smile looked like a frown, it might not even cross your mind to have this done. I was one of those people who had to choose between having the surgical procedure performed on me or staying the way I was, with an annoying overbite.
I went to the dentist on a weekend. He was tired of me complaining about my overbite every time I had my biannual check up. I even got a nickname, much to my dismay: “that annoying overbite guy”. To me, the overbite was one of those things that prevented me from being as successful as I could career-wise and around girls. Can you believe that some of my friends didn’t even know what an overbite was and just accepted me for who I was? I love them for that, but this was something I had to get rid of.
My poor dentist, sick of my constant moaning, told me that he could refer me to one of his colleagues who was a professional in dealing with “cases” like mine. He explained in much detail how he’d do so. I think I visibly paled at the graphic description of the surgery, but i was fascinated. Dental surgery… huh? It was something that I had never thought about. Despite me seeing myself as a pretty happy-go lucky type of guy, I noticed myself sinking deeper and deeper into apathy due to my overbite. I was inspired by my dentist’s words.
I asked him for more information, particularly about costs, any chance of injury or long-term health defects and anything else I should be aware of. He said to me, “well OK. There’s always good news and bad news. I’ll tell you the bad news first.”
I was prepared for what my dentist first said, which was something along the lines that the procedure would set me back a couple grand at least. He was also inclined to warn me that no matter how careful the surgeons are, I could also get an infection, since the inside of my mouth was getting cut open. I was aware of this, since I’d studied anatomy in my final year of university.
He said that the colleague he was going to refer me to had done my type of operation dozens of times in his long and established career. He had a decade of experience in the field and even gave seminars to undergraduate dentists at universities around the country. I could also expect a pretty quick recovery, something in the field of a week.
I went home to think about it. Dental surgery had it’s advantages and disadvantages. I was leaning more to the pros than the cons. The first step is to save up enough money for the operation…