| I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled one fine Friday afternoon when I was a senior in high school. I guess I was fairly young to have them in fully. (I was 18) Anyway, there really was only one of them that needed to come out - I had room for the others, but since wisdom teeth are so far back and can be somewhat problematic because they are hard to brush, and therefore on some people are prone to cavities, I opted to have all four pulled.
I was lucky in that I had very little swelling an only a minor bit of lingering pain. The only place that was swollen was my lower right jaw where the one problematic, impacted tooth was located, and the swelling was gone by the next morning. I had scheduled to be off of work the next day because I worked in a donut shop and the Saturday shift started sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 am and I didn't know if I would be up for it since some people really get knocked out by having wisdom teeth pulled. As it turned out, I could have gone in that day, but I had no way of knowing that in advance.
But back to the trumpet - I tried to play in band class the following Monday, and simply couldn't. While I normally didn't have a lot of lingering pain, it did hurt when tried to play trumpet, so I took a few days off until some of the trauma had a chance to heal a bit. Something else that was startling to me was how much having those four teeth pulled affected my range and endurance. It could be that I picked up some bad habits trying to compensate for the change in my mouth, but it was actually months before things started feeling "right" again.
I'm not trying to scare you, but that was my experience. Removing four fairly large teeth from the back of my mouth made quite a difference in the size and shape of my oral cavity and while there were some benefits to be had (personally, I think my sound became bigger) it also had some detractors. But something to keep in mind is that I was a high school kid, still trying to develop and embouchure, and I didn't have set practice routines - being primarily self taught, I was still bumbling and fumbling trying to figure stuff out on my own.
Good luck to you. Just make sure that you give those holes time to heal and if you find yourself with some ensuing chops problems because of getting your teeth pulled, I'm sure Manny will have something good for you to get you back on track.
__________________ Patrick Gleason
email me at: trickg1@hotmail.com
"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
"At my signal, unleash hell."
- Maximus Decimus Meridius |