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Wellness Wednesday for November 12, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I'm coming up on two weeks since I had that molar surgically extracted and the bone graft done. Here are a few notes for anyone who might have to deal with it in the future:

  1. You're going to sleep a lot the first day. Set alarms to stay hydrated and take ibuprofen.
  2. The "soft foods" restriction absolutely sucks. You're going to have a difficult time getting enough calories. Dairy is your friend here. Rich mashed potatoes have kept me from losing too much weight. A protein shake also isn't a terrible idea: in addition to the protein, they tend to be fortified with a ton of other micronutrients.
  3. Since you're calorie deficient and burning what energy you do consume to heal, you're going to be cold all the damned time. Layer up.
  4. Don't bend over for the first 48 hours unless you enjoy bleeding.
  5. You will be cold ALL THE DAMNED TIME. I write this from underneath a thermal base layer, long Johns, sweatpants, a waffle long sleeved shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, fingerless gloves, and a blanket and I am still cold.
  6. Don't take a hot bath for the first 48 hours. It makes the affected area more uncomfortable.
  7. Discomfort is going to peak around 48-72 hours. It will get better from there.
  8. The stitches are rough and have a pretty good chance of abrading your tongue. This will be especially bad on the first day before the anesthesia wears off. When you can, try to sleep on your side so that your tongue falls away from them rather than on to them.
  9. On the first night, try sleeping as close to sitting up as you can manage. It'll really help keep the swelling down.

I'm open to questions if anybody has something similar on the horizon or they're just morbidly curious.