A Dental Roundup reference
The Recovery Desk.
The question people take to the internet at 2am after a dental procedure is not "what is dry socket". It is "it's day three, this is what I see, is this normal?" A few clinics publish their own day-by-day timeline, but nobody lines the sources up side by side with the call-your-dentist triggers next to the reassurance, so forum threads have been standing in for that. This desk does it properly: for each stage of healing, what published guidance describes as typical, what it says should prompt a call, and what needs urgent care, quoted word for word from the source, dated.
Every line on these pages quotes a named source word for word, with the date we last checked it beside it.
Simple extractions and surgical or wisdom-tooth extractions
Tooth extraction
This page walks the first few weeks after a tooth extraction window by window, quoting what published dental sources describe as ordinary at each stage and what those same sources name as a reason to call. Count the day of your extraction as day 0. Day numbers inside a quote are the source's own count, which may start at day 1. Nothing here tells you what is going on in your own mouth, and where the sources disagree you get both numbers with the page that gave each one.
How this desk works
Every line on a Recovery Desk page is a quotation from a named authority (a national dental association, a major clinic, a health service, or a peer-reviewed review), captured and dated on the day we checked it. Our build system refuses to publish a line whose quote cannot be found in the captured source. We do not summarise sources in our own words where the wording matters, and we do not fill gaps by inference: if the sources do not give a number, the page does not either.
This is a reference, not a diagnosis. We are not dentists and this is not medical advice. Nothing here can tell you what is happening in your mouth; it can only tell you what published guidance says is ordinary at this stage and what it says should prompt a call. If you are worried, call your dentist or surgeon. If you cannot reach them and something on the urgent list applies, seek emergency care.
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