I just had this done a few weeks ago, at the age of 29. I’d been terrified for years about it. I’m really glad I did it.
The bottom line: the surgery itself is easy. Recovery kind of sucks. It took me a full 4 days to feel anything resembling normal, and a week to eat normal food. I am told that a couple of my teeth were more difficult to remove than average, so my recovery was probably on the rougher side.
Re: surgery. If your oral surgeon has IV “twilight” sedation as an option, go for it! You won’t feel weird “going to sleep”... you won’t even notice anything happening. As my doctor put it, “You’ll feel like you’ve had a glass of really great wine, and then you’ll wake up and it’s all over.” You won’t feel nauseated from the anesthesia, either. The IV needle doesn’t hurt at all, I bareley even noticed it. (Novacaine needles are way worse than the IV needle.)
Recovery: It is weirder than I thought to have a mouth full of stitches and holes. I was really shocked by how icky it was inside my mouth! I also had trouble opening my mouth and a lot of pain afterwards, but I was able to manage it with Ibuprofen (no special pain meds) and by eating lots of mashed potatoes and gelato. I watched a ton of DVDs and read some great books and stayed in bed for 2 days, with a little going on out days 3 and 4.
