I saw the x-rays of my wisdom teeth, the crown were flat up against the adjacent molars. They had put so much pressure on my teeth that there was an inward bow in the front. The dentist asked why my parents didn't take me to a civilian dentist at least a year earlier. "Dad didn't want to pay the co-pay. He said I could wait until I joined up."
One of mine was like that. I'd also lost a molar due to an abscess on the same side but upper jaw rather than lower. Since they wanted things balanced for braces that gave two reasons for taking it out. At first they were going to take more of them but that was because the xrays got mislabeled. When I had the dentist take a closer look that fact was established.
Imagine 200 years ago... I remember watching a doco years ago, they dug up a skeleton from the front of an old church...they found what they said was a woman. Looking at the skull, they could easily see the cavity eaten out from an infection born from a rotten tooth...the palat had been holed in a couple of spots...’the puss would have been dripping onto her toungue..’ having tooth pain all my life, I still can’t imagine the weeks or months of misery this woman would have gone through before the infection got into her blood stream and killed her.
Well I'm entering day 4 of the recovery from the surgery, and I feel just fine, no pain at all! My Friend went back to live with his real family this morning , I still am eating pudding and jello, it probably won't be until tomorrow that I will attempt to eat a semi-solid food.
I had one taken by private dentist. Local anesthesia and 60 minutes. Then I had one taken by student Health care dentist, including local anesthesia and the removal altogether 7 minutes.interesting. the other two I donated to students who were becoming dentists.