I am not a medical professional so don’t substitute my advice for that of one. But here is what I know from my experience with four impacted wisdom teeth in an already crowded mouth:
The sooner you have impacted wisdom teeth out the better. As your teeth grow, they push the adjacent teeth out of the way, which can make your front teeth less than straight. Corrective orthodontics can be costly. Also, obviously as they get larger they will leave a larger hole behind when they are removed and thus probably take longer to heal and be a more invasive surgery. I have heard of some surgeries that were quite minor because they were done very early when the teeth were quite small.
I knew I had impacted teeth when I started to get recurring headaches and one tooth partially came up above the gum line. The headaches came and went. I might go a month or more without having a headache or sometimes I’d have them several days in a row. I probably waited a year and a half or so from the time I first started experiencing these headaches before I had them removed. I know someone who waited until the headaches were quite unbearable to have them removed – he said the headaches always came back and so he knew he really had to get them removed. His teeth moved a bit but mine moved a lot. Maybe if you have a lot of space in your mouth it isn’t as critical to have them removed. The other issue I know about with impacted wisdoms is a greater potential for infections in the future, but I’m not sure how likely that is.
When I finally did have them removed, I had myself sedated so I do not remember anything from the actual surgery just them inserting the needle in my arm and then the surgeon laughing at me after I “woke up” (you’re not really asleep). My mouth bled for maybe two or three days. Post-op was very uncomfortable, but not unbearable. I let the drugs wear off once just to see how much pain there really was. My eyes were tearing and it wasn’t long before I swallowed a Vicodin. I do know people that have had gone through both the surgery and post-op without any painkillers at all, though, because they are nuts!
I spent the first two days in bed sleeping (I had it done on a Friday), and I took Monday off from work because I didn’t want to be bleeding from the mouth in front of my coworkers but I wasn’t nearly as miserable as Day 1 or 2. By Tuesday I was back to work. You have to shoot food out of the holes left by the lower teeth and hopefully you will get dissolving sutures. And do not drink anything out of a straw. The sucking motion can rip open the wounds. They’ll tell you all this when you go in… I don’t know why I’m typing it.
You should read up about the risks involved with the procedure just to know what they are. The ones that come to mind are dry sockets and permanent numbness in parts of the face if they hit a major nerve. I didn’t experience either. I think dry sockets are quite common but numbness is very rare. My surgeon didn’t really mention any of these, probably because it isn’t that common and he didn’t want to cause any more angst.
So that brings me to the point of this whole thing which is that you should absolutely have a surgeon that you trust. Other people already gave great advice like consult your dentist, do your own research… Sometimes if you do not have insurance, the doctor will discount their fee so that might help a bit. Also maybe you could research insurance plans and find one that covers the surgery that would be more affordable than not having the insurance. There is usually a ‘grace period’ between when you enroll in a plan and when you are covered so there would probably be a bit of a wait involved. You can probably put it off for a while, but don’t put it off longer than absolutely necessary. There really is nothing fun about this procedure but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and honestly I really wish I had had it done sooner.