Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Healthy yellow teeth.

This is an edifying story about my teeth. If that sounds too boring to you, proceed at your own risk.

I had a dentist's appointment on Monday to have my wisdom teeth removed. I got an invitation 2 ½ years ago, but I never went because they sent it to a wrong email address. Now that I finally got the invitation to my real address, my wisdom teeth had fully erupted without any gum flaps! So the dentist told me that it wouldn't make any sense to get them removed anymore.

She said it's very rare for a woman to have such perfectly erupted wisdom teeth in perfect line with the other teeth. But this got me wondering. If they would have removed them a couple years back, but waiting it out, they actually became perfect teeth... why don't they always wait and see if they can become good teeth or not? I never had any problems with them, even when they were still partly under the gum. Only some minor uncomfort, which is natural, but never infections or anything.

Initially I wasn't going to go to the dentist because I hadn't had any problems with them. But then I read an article in Lääkärilehti (an official magazine for doctors that my parents subscribe to). It said that wisdom teeth will always be an infection risk, no matter what, so they have to be removed. But this dentist said that there is no risk since I have very little dental caries and no gum flaps.

So the lesson is, don't trust everything they say in Lääkärilehti. Obviously everything they said was right, except they didn't consider cases where the wisdom teeth erupt perfectly. Maybe it's so uncommon that they didn't bother mentioning that?

Anyway, I'm truly fascinated by the doctor magazines my parents get. It's so cool to have both parents as doctors, because I can always ask about the strangest things that come to my mind. Like, what was that disease that can cause your eyeballs to bulge out?

Answer: Toxic goiter, i.e. a goiter with hyperthyroidism. It's when your thyroid overproduces hormones and you have to shut it down completely with medication. After that, you have to take hormone meds for the rest of your life to compensate.

Medicine is so cool. I wouldn't want to be a doctor, but it's absolutely fascinating to learn about all kinds of icky things that can happen to a human body.

3 comments:

Amoena said...

Se tulehduksen riski voi tietenkin olla jossakin muuallakin kuin siinä hampaassa. Multa poistettiin ylhäältä kun tulehdus oli alhaalla :D Että ei siinä poistetussa viisaudenhampaassa oikeastaan ollut mitään vikaa, se oli vaan kasvanut vähän liian innokkaasti :P

ELINA said...

Sitä vaan mietin et jos on se mahdollisuus et ne kasvaa kaikin puolin niin ettei mikään kohta häiriinny, eikä tulehdusvaaraa yhtään missään.. niin siihen ei anneta mahdollisuuksia... No, sama se, kunhan itse sain pitää ne.

Amoena said...

Oon ehkä vähän kieroutunut, mutta mun mielestä toi hampaiden poisto oli oikeasti kivaa :D Mä olen kyllä ajatellut että voisi noiden alaviisaudenhampaiden olla vielä, ellei nekin sitten ala oireilemaan jotenkin. Niissä on sellaiset ienpussit jotka voikin tulehtua helposti. Tosin musta tuntuu että multa on saattanut lähteä paikka, ja sitä voisi vinetä siinä samassa. Pelkän epäilyn takia ei viittis mennä :D