Okay, so, nothing can prepare you for the pain that comes with getting your third molars a.k.a. wisdom teeth removed. Remnants of faulty evolution in some human bodies, wisdom teeth – more often than not – have to be pulled out, especially if they’re causing you discomfort, growing in a certain angle they shouldn’t be, or if your jaw can no longer accommodate any more teeth.

Before you undergo surgery, you’ve probably been told that it would hurt after the anesthetics wear off. But until you experience it yourself, you wouldn’t really realize how much it actually hurts: a lot.

The pain is just the beginning of your week-long suffering, though. Dealing with it while trying to recover is a different kind of hell, too. Let me walk you through it:

1. SO. MUCH. BLOOD.

If you think the bleeding would stop when you get home after your surgery, you’re wrong. The socket where your wisdom tooth used to be will keep bleeding even after a day, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

2. The food restrictions

You’re not allowed to eat solid and hot food (among many others) in the next couple of days, so that means a lot of cold soup, oatmeal, yogurt, and ice cream, which isn’t that bad, really, until you see your family and friends mercilessly devouring the good stuff like pizza or fried chicken in front of you.

3. Okay, screw food restrictions – you can barely open your mouth!

Everything that came so easily and so naturally to you before, like opening your mouth, chewing, and swallowing, now feel like an Olympic sport. And not to mention, you have to take care of the stitches! Yes, there will be stitches in your mouth to hold your gums together (they’ve been sliced open earlier so the surgeon could access the tooth) until they heal.

4. But you still have to eat somehow because you’ll have to take some meds.

To prevent infection, your dentist or surgeon will most likely prescribe you some antibiotics, which you can’t take without eating at least a little. So whether you like it or not, you gotta eat up.

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