My dentist gave me carte blanche to consume as much ice cream as I wanted to post-extraction, because it doesn’t involve any chewing and the cold numbs the pain. I ended up looking forward to the extraction, since I hadn’t had ice cream in years, stocking up the freezer with a veritable cornucopia of Ben and Jerry’s flavors.
Post-extraction though, I discovered I couldn’t open my mouth enough to even fit a teaspoon, since I had had all four wisdom teeth pulled and there were stiches in the wound. I wrote to the dentist to enquire if I could blend the ice cream into shakes and drink them through a straw. His response was that using straws was not recommended, since the sucking motion could dislodge the blood clots at the wound and result in the dreaded dry socket. If you have ever experienced the excruciating pain of a dry socket, which I had in a previous extraction, you would heed the dentist’s advice, and I did so. I ended up preparing the shakes and drinking them without the straw, but the experience had neither the satisfaction of eating the ice cream or slurping the shake through a straw.
If I were to do it all over again, I would spread the extraction over four weeks, primarily to binge on ice cream for that period. A single extraction at a time would’ve allowed me to open my mouth enough.
