My mother got nerve damage from having her wisdom teeth removed. Her lower lip on the right side is completely numb, and she often drools there and can't feel it because of the damage. That was, note, her lower lip. I was told when I went through my own wisdom teeth mess that it's the bottom ones that come with complications; the top ones aren't really much of a thing. Bottom ones come with the small chance that they've got tangled with nerves, or the tiny chance that the open socket might cause bone to become exposed which apparently is insanely painful. So... there is that. 

For me, one of my upper wisdom teeth just sort of crumbled. It wasn't painful, and there was none of the smell or swelling you'd associate with an abscess. Rather, I just noticed one day that there was a hole in the tooth big enough that I could push the tip of my tongue inside it. No pain, no soreness, it was just there. I was told the same process was starting to happen to the other upper wisdom tooth so I went ahead and had it removed too. They suggested I go ahead and take it all in one swoop, but since there was technically nothing wrong with the bottom wisdom teeth, I decided to keep'em. No use wasting money on hypothetical orthodontics.