Avoiding Dry Socket?

April 24, 2017 11:29 AM

I had a wisdom tooth removed today. They mentioned the risk of dry socket, and said to not: smoke (not worries), drink from a straw (easy enough), not eat seeded food that might get caught in teeth (also pretty easy), or spit - not spitting seems very, very hard, especially with my regular brushing and mouthwash routine. Does anyone have any advice for making sure my mouth heals optimally in the next week?
posted by codacorolla to Health & Fitness (25 answers total)

Make sure to use that squirty thing!
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:31 AM on April 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Chewing on a black tea bag is helpful too. The tannins or something are good for you, plus it just feels nice to have something besides gauze in your mouth.
posted by hydra77 at 11:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

You can swallow toothpaste. It won't do you any harm.

But otherwise, just rinse well with water and let it fall out of your mouth. You'll have to lean over the sink more than you normally would and it might make a bit of a mess, but shouldn't be too much an issue. Mostly you just don't want to create any suction.
posted by INFJ at 11:36 AM on April 24, 2017 [13 favorites]

Best answer: For not spitting: just open your mouth, tip your chin down, and let the fluids drain out. If you have 'leftovers', continue lowering your chin. Best done directly over the sink and with a towel or kleenex handy.

Most recommend avoiding exercise for a certain number of days, possibly with avoiding carbonated drinks and alcohol. Try to avoid coughing, or doing anything that will 'jar' the area. (Dry socket is when the blood clot comes loose and falls out, so just... try to prevent things that might jar loose a blood clot.).

But: dry socket is rare, and even if it happens it tends to be on the "painful and inconvenient" side rather than the "dangerous" side. If it happens, you can go back to get it packed to reduce the pain. Don't worry too much.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:44 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Seconding flibbertigibbet. Had several teeth removed and smoked, spit, ate seeded foods with no problems. Had a tooth removed years later and did everything right and got dry socket. I think it's all luck of the draw.
posted by MadMadam at 11:49 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you have a detachable showerhead, or one of those water fountain attachments for your sink, you can sort of spray it in your mouth and let it rinse everything away well enough, so long as you don't close your mouth and swish.
posted by PearlRose at 11:52 AM on April 24, 2017

Are you sure they meant even spitting out your toothpaste a couple of times a day, or was the instruction really aimed at that growing number (in my estimation) of people who are always spitting on sidewalks out in public? They don't even seem to be chewing tobacco or anything, it's like a big gross fad.
posted by mareli at 12:02 PM on April 24, 2017

I had mine out a couple years ago - make a salt water and tumeric rinse to swish around, it will keep things clean and healing well.
posted by lafemma at 12:38 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Echoing MadMadam, sometimes you just get dry socket. That said, although I followed all the precautions, I blame my case on vomiting the night after the procedure because of my sensitivity to narcotic pain meds. If I could go back in time I'd tough it out with Advil and Tylenol -- I thought I'd heal faster if I were comfortable enough to sleep through the night, instead I bought an extra couple weeks of misery.
posted by telegraph at 12:56 PM on April 24, 2017

I've had three teeth removed (not all at once, happily) and Mr. Llama had one removed a few weeks ago. In each case the after care slip from the dentist said not to spit 'forcefully'.

You might want to call the office for clarification.

FWIW all healing for all of our sad missing teeth went just fine, much less of a big deal than I would have guessed.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 1:11 PM on April 24, 2017

It's not so much the spitting, as it is the suction you create in your mouth when gathering the contents you want to spit out.
posted by ApathyGirl at 1:20 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I was a little confused too, so I clarified a few times in office (I had local anesthesia, not general) about the spitting. It's good to hear that dry socket is rare. I have the gauze out now, and the last one had much less blood than the first. Hopefully the clot forms soon-ish. Time to go grocery shopping tomorrow and stock up on bland, soft things.
posted by codacorolla at 1:22 PM on April 24, 2017

Best answer: Warm salt water washes are disgusting, but really really good for your mouth. Do them at bedtime. Swish gently. I'd leave out the tumeric ask I've never heard that advised before.

ETA: I absolutely hate doing these and my mouth always feels better afterwards. I don't use a recipe, I just stick a bunch of salt in warm to hot tap water and rinse with the bit that went into solution. Spit out afterwards.
posted by maryr at 1:45 PM on April 24, 2017

Best answer: For the first few days after an extraction I tend to drink a lot of Odwalla's protein drinks so I don't have to worry about eating.

As for not spitting: I found it kind of cathartic, a throwback to childhood (or more specifically: boyhood, with all the 'joy of being gross' that comes with it). It was a lot of fun to just lean over the sink and open my mouth like BLUUUUUUUHHHHHH and let stuff fall out. We don't really get a chance to do that in our daily lives, you know?

If you're not really into whatever I just typed, then brush your teeth in the shower. The BLUUUUUUUHHHHHH gets drained away immediately, and there's running water right there in your face so you can fill your mouth up and do it again, and again, and again, and then eventually you realize your mouth is clean but you're beginning to revel in the act of BLUUUUUUUHHHHHH and there you have it.
posted by komara at 1:59 PM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

The salt water should only be as salty as tears, if you want to do those rinses. I hear people say it's disgusting all the time and then find out they are using WAY too much salt.
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:55 PM on April 24, 2017

Ultimately you want to not make suction. So you can blow/huff, but don't close your lips. Just rinse and dribble, it'll be okay.

And yeah, warm salt water rinses shouldn't make the inside of your mouth pucker or sting your tongue. I just did one teaspoon of kosher in one cup/8oz water and it was salty enough to be soothing but not enough to hurt.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:27 PM on April 24, 2017

Just skip the regular tooth-brushing routine for 2 days and you'll probably survive. Salt water rinses with gentle spewing; avoiding gooey chewy foods, & intense exercise or other excitements for a bit. That chewing on a tea bag idea seems kinda funny to me?
posted by ovvl at 5:30 PM on April 24, 2017

I had all four taken out at once. The tea bag helps me as a pleasant distraction from gauze. I had mine out first thing Friday morning and slept big chunks of the morning and afternoon. Saturday was a mixed bag and by Sunday I was functioning pretty well.
posted by mmascolino at 5:52 PM on April 24, 2017

I found that rock salt had a much better mouth feel for those rinses than table salt. Still not pleasant but not that horrible. Just make sure not to swallow any!
posted by pianissimo at 6:21 PM on April 24, 2017

I had all four out at once and the two bottom ones got dry sockets, despite my following the directions. I think if I could do it all again, I would also make it a point to avoid soft foods that can end up sticking to teeth. I thought I was okay eating a slice of walnut pound cake because it was soft, but that ended up getting stuck to my teeth and I had to irrigate extra well with the squirty doohickey to get it clean. That probably didn't help me avoid the dry sockets, haha.

However, like others have said above, dry sockets aren't fun, but they're not the worst thing in the world either. I figured I had them when more than a week had passed and I was still living post-surgery pain killer to post-surgery pain killer to keep my jaw from aching, so I went in and they soaked some slow-dissolve gauze (which, if you have a choice, choose this one and save yourself a trip back to get the gauze removed!) in clove oil and stuffed it in. Surprisingly low-tech solution, but effective! (Although, to this day, I still cannot handle cloves. Ech.)

Good luck!
posted by helloimjennsco at 6:23 AM on April 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I have to say that saying "blaaaaah" as I slowly release a mouthful of stuff has been pretty fun. So far, so good, I think. There was still blood in my saliva last night, but this morning that's all but disappeared, which I think is probably good. Is there a point where I'm still having blood in my saliva that I should call the doctor back up?
posted by codacorolla at 8:54 AM on April 25, 2017 [4 favorites]

I had the same as helloimjennsco. All four out at once, under a general anaesthetic. It was the only way that my non-dental medical would cover it. For a few days, I felt nauseated, and my jaw ached a bit. It seemed to go on for longer than I thought for an anaesthetic, but I didn't think it was more than just a terrible ache. I went in to the dentist, and was shocked that they said it was dry sockets. Same treatment also. Gauze soaked in oil of cloves. It took every bit of pain away. Not that I had thought of it as pain... but oh well. I'd go back every so often and they'd remove some of the gauze as it healed from the bottom up. Anyway, I don't recall doing anything that might have caused it. I was doing my best to simply recover from going under, and it became my reality.
posted by itsflyable at 11:58 AM on April 25, 2017

Best answer: The blood ooze will commonly last for 24-48 hours (some doctors offices only call the bleeding normal for the first 24 hours; some say 24-48 hours; some day 'a few days'). If you feel uncomfortable with the amount of bleeding and your aftercare instructions don't address this, give 'em a call -- it doesn't hurt.

In general, you want the bleeding to be 'incidental blood in the saliva' side of things at this point. Which is exactly what it sounds like you had!
posted by flibbertigibbet at 12:51 PM on April 25, 2017

Response by poster: Is there any way I'll be able to tell that it's safe to eat real food? I want to eat real food so bad. I'm so sick of soft, cream based things.
posted by codacorolla at 5:23 PM on April 25, 2017

Best answer: Eat real food, as long as your doctor didn't say you still can't. Maybe don't eat hard pretzels or potato chips (things that can shatter, get down in there, and turn gummy and hard to rinse out, or will stick to your stitches) but I was eating hamburgers and chicken dinner and pizza on the third day. I had one of these irrigation syringes that I used to flush out the back corners of my mouth and sutures after meals. They have them at the drugstore.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:03 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]