I had mine removed a little over a year ago...all four in one sitting. The top two were normal, the lower two not so much. One of the bottoms was underneath bone, which had to be sawed away and then the tooth had to be cut into pieces to be removed, the other one was underneath gums which had to be cut away. Lovely.
I was on very high doses of vicodin, ibuprofen and clindamycin (antibiotic), each of which I took every 6 hours for a week (6am, noon, 6pm, midnight). I think all of the anti-inflammatory ibu really helped...I had almost no swelling and not a bit of pain, though the pain started up strong when I tried to skip a vicodin dose.
Overcooked pasta, soup and ice cream were my friends that week as my jaw didn't want to open very far and felt weird to open wide for almost 3 weeks afterwards. Went on study abroad in France not long after and the good French bread kept getting stuck in the holes where my teeth had been and cleaning them out resulted in a toothbrush full of dissolving stitches!
Fun times!