Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

I thought this was an interesting question. http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/80495/ As it turns out, I had 5 dentes sapientiæ. So did most of my children. The article referenced in the Board's answer said nothing about the possibility that someone could have more than 4 wisdom teeth. I'm feeling special now.

I had them removed shortly before my mission. Bone fragments were working their way out between my teeth and gums for the first year of my mission. The dentist used Sodium Pentothal (truth serum) to knock me out during the removal. Interesting side effects.

I only had four wisdom teeth, but I had a fifth tooth removed on the same day. It was an adult tooth that refused to grow larger than a small nub so we had it taken out. I still have a baby tooth because of this.

I was just thinking today about how teeth are so weird. My wisdom teeth tried to grow sideways under the teeth beside them. And I just think the whole baby teeth that fall out thing is so weird. Like there's a several years long period of your life when your teeth just fall out all the time, but that's ok, because there's another one coming.

Also, one of my teeth randomly broke in half the other day. I was post-call and I was eating a muffin of all things and I was about to go to bed and my tooth just broke in half. So then I went to an emergency dentist instead of going to bed. And it turns out there was a huge cavity inside my tooth that I had no idea about. And it didn't hurt when my tooth broke and it didn't hurt at all before my tooth broke, and that's the most unsettling part of all. You would think it would hurt if your tooth was destroying itself from the inside out.

Teeth just really creep me out lately.

One of my wisdom teeth started growing in, stopped growing when it broke the gumline, and just kind of...hung out. But it growing in is what triggered my TMD, so my dentist removed all four of them before it could be made worse. But, as much of a pain baby as I am, it didn't really hurt having them taken out. I was awake the whole procedure, which was kind of neat. One of them wouldn't come out, so he had to break it apart, drill a hole through it, and then lever it out. That was time consuming, but AWESOME.

I kept three of my wisdom teeth for YEARS because they were super cool. Removing them did not improve my TMD, but oh well.