Goodbye Bicuspids!

Well, today was the day for me to lose my top first bicuspids, and I have to say, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. My surgeon took a few minutes, first, to show me exactly why he needed to do this. I wish I had a copy of the X-ray to post, but basically, the roots of my canines and bicuspids are very, very close together. During surgery, one of the cuts is going to go between the canines and first bicuspid, so there was a high probability of damaging both teeth if some space wasn't made. When he pointed that out, I couldn't imagine how the surgeons I'd had previously were planning to do it, there was absolutely NO room! Normally, they'd use the braces to make more space, but there just isn't any in my mouth. So that was the reasoning behind this whole ordeal.
I hadn't researched this at all because the idea of having teeth yanked out of my mouth was just so gross to me I couldn't even think about it! But it wasn't all that bad. The Novocaine was probably the worst part. Then he clipped the wires and scraped the bracket off. He poked around the tooth for a minute or so, and when he started pulling I couldn't even tell. There was pressure, but not so intense that I couldn't pretend he was still just poking around. I was afraid there would be terrible sounds, like the roots cracking or popping out, but again, not bad. It was over in just a few minutes, and a lot less traumatizing than I'd been afraid of!
The pain really hasn't been bad either. They prescribed tylenol with codeine which has probably helped! The bleeding did last a lot longer than I expected. And was more intense than I expected. My friend texted me about 2 hours afterwards to ask how I looked. I checked the mirror for the first time and texted back "Like Edward freaking Cullen after dinner!" (He's the vampire in the Twilight series, extremely popular with the middle school ladies I teach. Okay, okay, I've read them too.) Until about 9 I was still getting up every 10 minutes or so to spit out a mouthful of bloody saliva (sorry, gross, I know). Of course, spit is a relative term... we're talking more like drool. Anyways, I had a smoothie for dinner once that tapered off, because really, who wants a blood flavored smoothie?
So that's the story. I'm a little nervous about going to sleep, because I remember after having my wisdom teeth out, waking up in the morning was the worst. Fortunately, I told the kids I'll be working with tomorrow that I might look like a chipmunk and talk like, well, someone that just had a few teeth pulled out of their mouth. And that they'd better work hard to understand me. I'll be trying their patience, for once, instead of the other way around!