Hello @meringue700, Surgery to remove some impacted teeth when you were younger shouldn’t have created any issue for the future eruption of your wisdom teeth, unless you have a small mouth and there was constriction with some of your other teeth as well. Anyway, that’s now a thing of the past so let’s address your current situation.

Not all wisdom teeth (3rd molars) require removal. That will depend on whether there is room in the upper/ lower arches for the teeth. If there isn’t room for them to completely erupt into place, forcing them to be tilted/growing in at an angle, then that warrants removal.

Oh gosh, then it leads me to the sedation portion of your question. It is possible to have just local anesthesia at the site of the extraction. That way you won’t be under IV sedation. You won’t feel anything because the tissue is numb. Often, at those appointments the dentist/oral surgeon may opt to only do one side at a time.

If you opt for oral conscious sedation then a benzodiazepine-based drug is used. You’re still awake but ‘you don’t care’ and have little memory of anything that took place with the extraction. The iv medication changes the brain activity and reduces anxiety, has an impact on your memory and capacity to think which is why people may act out weirdly after wisdom teeth removal. I can tell you from the perspective of the dental team, it’s common place and we don’t think anything of it. It can last in the body for up to 5 or 6 hours so you can’t drive afterwards and would need a ride. But you’re completely relaxed during the procedure.

The goal of your dental team is to make sure you’re comfortable, pain free and never humiliated. I don’t ever remember anyone saying something that was incriminating or personally embarrassing. We do laugh along with a patient sometimes because the conversation is funny, but not at the patient. Trust me, people you see drinking at a bar or party are way worse behaving than anything I’ve seen with a patient post-op from sedation. So don’t let that impact your decision to go ahead with oral conscious sedation.
There’s also nitrous oxide, laughing gas, which can take the edge off the appointment as well. That is cleared from the system within 5 minutes after the appointment.

Have you been to see a dentist recently to have X-rays or a full mouth Panorex X-ray taken to see where your wisdom teeth are in their journey to the surface?