I've had 12 teeth pulled, of which 6 were adult, and 4 hadn't yet broken the gumline (and speaking of those four, allow me to say that Nitrous Oxide is amazing stuff). My extractions went pretty smoothly and weren't for reasons of abscess, but still, I can sympathize with the recovering process for sure. One word of advice: for the love of god, no matter much you want them and no matter how careful you think you can be, do NOT eat Doritos. Seriously. Just don't.

Oh, and just to give you some perspective on your experience, I'll share a brief anecdote. My great grandmother was one of the first female dentists in the country. This was back before local anesthetic and most other modern dentistry. My dad, as a boy, regularly watched her physically kneeling on top of men strapped to the dentist chair and screaming their heads off. Obviously this was before my time, so you'd think I might wonder if he was making his stories up, but we still have my great grandmother's dental cabinet and it's assortment of gruesome old-fashioned tools. Suffice to say that, despite all of your pain, you are a lucky, lucky man to live in 2012.

Good luck with the healing.

EDIT: Just looked up the history of dental anesthesia (the things I'll do to avoid work...) and apparently it came into widespread use around 1940. My great grandmother definitely practiced prior to that, but my dad wouldn't have been around to watch at that point. So now I'm thinking either he was just repeating someone else's stories about watching her, or else maybe she was a very late holdout on the local anesthetic bandwagon.