Wisdom Teeth vs. Jaw Surgery

All this comparison talk of having surgery and your wisdom teeth pulled has prompted me to post my views on the subject. For the most part, I do think people are just trying to empathize by relaying their extraction experiences when talk of surgery comes up. I've seen enough sour faces and cringes of terror (even before the graphic descriptions) to know that most people don't envy the surgery patient. And I think it would take a truly insensitive person to actually believe that their outpatient procedure could trump an osteotomy. So when your sister-in-law or buddy at the office tries to make you tense up with their little story, just try to be polite, they obviously don't know any better. I will offer my opinion of each side having just done both.

Wisdom Teeth-
-point of information, all four of mine were erupted. I'm sure they would not have come in as smooth as they did had I not had a set of premolars removed in middle school. I will say that I'm pretty sure the swelling would have been 10 times worse if they were impacted.
-pain, during the first day or so the pain from the extractions was more noticeable than from the osteotomy. After the 5th or 6th day when I was completely off the pain meds they again became the more annoying of the two pains. It's sharper and more localized for obvious reasons.
-bleeding, when blood spills out of your mouth while you're rinsing it's hard to say exactly where it's coming from. But I'm fairly confident that there was very minimal bleeding after I left the hospital 27 hours later.

Two-piece Leforte I-
-what makes this surgery above and beyond an extraction is how it effects everything around you for a much longer period of time. Putting the gory details aside let's look at the two side by side. Longer operating time, more blood loss, liquid/soft food diet for about 5 times longer, pain meds prescribed are much more serious (morphine for crying out loud! They give that stuff to dying soldiers)
-from a lifestyle point of view, if I wanted to go lift weights or play hockey after an extraction I could do it that day. Might sting no doubt, but it'd be possible. After surgery? My maxilla is being held in place by the meat in my mouth. That's all. When I bite together I can feel my upper arch moving closer to my brain. Walking is now considered a jarring activity. Let's just say that that sort of instability changes the way you do simple things like sit in a chair, turn your head, and swallow your juice.
-pain, during the first couple days it felt like a burning sensation at the line where the cuts were made below my nose. But worse than that, when re-learning to swallow the maxilla does a whole lot of clanking around. And feeling it clank together up there was enough to stop everything around me. These last couple days have gotten better with that scar tissue starting to grow in there. The stitches are tight and dry up there and smiling is still very painful.
-bleeding, the bleeding thats going on seems to be leftovers from the procedure. A couple times a day I'll lean forward in just the right way and my nose will start dripping blood. Not a nosebleed, just leftovers that've pooled up in the nasal cavity. Gunks of blood have become slowly coughed up from the throat and the nasal area and I'm sure this is ok because it feels so relieving when I get a good piece.

With this in mind, I'd like to say that having your wisdom teeth is like hitting your thumb with a hammer. But jaw surgery is more like being splattered across the sidewalk by a bus.