Faced my dental phobia yesterday

[conxray]

Name changed for this.
I'm so proud of myself but I have absolutely no one I can tell.
I have a severe dental phobia and hadn't been to the dentist for 30 years until yesterday. I've never told anyone about the phobia. I started refusing to go when I was 14. I don't think my parents realized how bad it was.

Anyway, it has taken me forever to get up the courage to go. I am so fucking proud of myself. I have spent a year trying to find a dentist I could even face going to. Most wouldn't even email back. I couldn't phone as that was just too much. Every time I looked at a website or wrote an email I started feeling faint and sick. I'd cry after the email was sent. Most of the fuckers never wrote back.
Eventually one did.... I'm in Europe and she is 4 hours away in another country... but the way she wrote back made me think I could do it.

It took another couple of months with a bit of emailing to get the courage to make an appointment.
I went yesterday. Had to stay overnight in a hotel where I cried and panicked all night. I still made it into the practice yesterday, started crying and hyperventilating immediately
BUT when the dentist came out to get me something about her calmed me down. We'd agreed just to have a tour of the practice and a chat about my worries and how the phobia arose but within an hour she'd managed to do an X-ray and I'd sat in the chair, then lay down in it and let her look in my mouth.
I cannot believe it. I'm just so proud of myself for doing it but can tell no one as I will then have to "own up" to the dental phobia.

She said my teeth are in good condition and that I have looked after them very well. I was fearing a situation where half of them would have to be pulled.
She said I have superficial caries in some teeth. There's a wisdom teeth situation going on - they might need to come out but they can only come out in a hospital because of the way they are sitting on nerves. Fucking hell.

I feel so much better. I'm not panicking about the fillings. I might do when we get that far but the next step is that I go back in a couple of weeks for her to do a scale and polish. She wants to take everything in little steps so I feel comfortable. She said if the scale and polish is too much in one go she will do just the upper teeth and then I can have a lunch break and decide if I want to do the lower ones too or not.
I honestly think it's going to be ok and I can do this step.

I've tortured myself for 30 years and thought I'd never find a solution. I've done the first step and I can do the next. Then we'll see about the fillings.... but as I've also had a needle phobia and managed to get the COVID vaccine, maybe I can do a filling too.

Thank you to anyone who listened to this. I sort of want to celebrate getting this far!

Congratulations and well done for facing it head on!
I've always been very anxious about going to the dentist and it takes me a long time to pluck up the courage to go, I've had tooth ache for the past three weeks and I'm still not at the point I can phone yet but I'll get there.
Definitely don't be embarrassed about having a dentist phobia, your probably find it's a lot more common than you think!

She told me it is actually very common but people don't talk about it.
The worst thing was the shame of having to show her my teeth. So the pandemic helped a bit as we were both wearing masks to start with so I could talk without being self-conscious about my horrible teeth.
Pretty impressed with myself especially as we had not planned that I would have an examination at all!
I didn't want to look at my X-ray at first as I feared what I would see but at some point I asked if I could look at just the wisdom teeth but she said there was nothing bad on it so I should just look. It's actually really interesting! Stupid wisdom teeth!

Well done, you did amazingly well!

If you ask for the numbing gel before the filling and shut your eyes, you won't feel the needle at all.

Fillings really just feel like vibration and a bit of scraping and tugging around. They don't hurt at all.

Yes I'm going to ask for that. She also has a wand thing which is supposed to be completely painless.
Reassuring to hear what a filling actually feels like. People often tell horror stories about them.

Well done. I too have a phobia of dentists but do go from time to time. I am a nervous wreck leading up to it and while in the chair I feel so much anxiety. I don’t really tell anyone about it - my dentist knows I am a “nervous patient” but doesn’t realise the extent of it

Well done - it's an amazing feeling! I had similar, but did end up finding a sympathetic dentist when I had toothache that I just couldn't ignore any longer. I had small cavities due to a lifelong habit of drinking squash (I don't like tea or coffee), and he was amazing.

One thing he did do was to use a gel (it tastes like juicy fruit), so that I didn't even feel the needle go in. I've now had all my cavities filled (the drill just vibrates a bit, it doesn't hurt), and go every six months for a check up. Due to having one cavity right at the back I needed to have a nerve block, which sounded terrifying, but was just like a normal injection. I've never had a root canal or extraction, so my phobia hasn't completely gone away, but I now have a bit more confidence to deal with one if it happened.

Wow, I'm really impressed — that's a massive step and you took it all in your stride.

My dentist uses the wand. It’s so much better than having normal injection as you get the feeling back in your mouth soon after. I’m glad you managed to go to the dentist.

You are making me feel so much better about the fillings. People have always told me stories about how bad they are feeding the anxiety. But I think that:

1. If some people sense you have a phobia they enjoy winding you up. There are shit people around. AND
2. Some people like to tell tall stories about dramatic medical interventions which weren't strictly true.

I'm just relieved it wasn't worse. I had thoughts of every tooth needing a root canal or extraction, a whole load of crowns, implants and all the rest.

As a dentist I am so bloody proud of you! Well done, & well done to that dentist, she sounds marvellous.
The hardest bit is getting through the door and you've managed that.
Your situation really isn't unusual or anything to be embarrassed about. The longest I've ever had was a chap who hadn't seen a dentist in 48years and was terrified. He was only coming as they wouldn't do his cardiac surgery until his teeth were sorted. We got him sorted pretty easily & he still sends me a Christmas card every year.

@Darkrainbow

Thank you so much!
Yes, she was absolutely wonderful with me.
I kept apologizing for being such a "nightmare" but she said I wasn't and told me some stories about some people she's had. She said that some people have been very aggressive with her about things and often a deep fear is behind that but they don't want to say.
She says the best patients are the ones who are really open and honest about how they are feeling.

I am going in for the cleaning in 3 weeks. As I said upthread it's in another country so I've decided I'm going to take a week's holiday there and explore the area and on one of the days just call in at the dentist and have it done. Then we'll take it from there!

She said at the end of the consultation I could go home and when I felt I was ready I could book the cleaning at any point. I think I surprised her by saying let's just book it now.

Well done! You should be proud of yourself.

I'm similar - hadn't been to the dentist for 8 years. A tooth broke in lockdown and I had to have it taken out - went to emergency dentist. Then plucked up courage to go to a new private dentist, all women, and they have been fab. I cried when I went but they reassured me. I've had all my teeth scaled, cleaned and polished and have filings booked in. And I feel so much better about it and about myself for facing up to my fears!!

So well done.

Well done you too!

@conxray I made an account just to respond to this, well done you!
I spent a long time gradually getting over my dental phobia and at this point I can say I am completely free of it. You sound like you have the most important thing which is an understanding dentist you get on with but I will also say that diazepam is really good to help you feel calm when going into it. I used to use those before any filling and treatment to help me get by until I didn't need it anymore and I would recommend it for anyone feeling nervous.
And I have had; two extractions, at least a dozen fillings, and a root canal, and all of these are managable!

@Udon123
Thank you for that and going to the effort of making an account!
It's really helpful to know that it is possible to be free of it.
I had a long discussion with the dentist about this because a lot of dentists will offer sedation or general anesthetic and treat everything in one go (at least here in Central Europe). I said that I really didn't want to do that because it's not going to solve the phobia problem. When something else begins to hurt and I need future treatment I don't want to have to be sedated with by an anesthetist every single time.

I feel that tiny, gradual steps are the way to go. I want a solution to see me into the future and not some quick fix.
Sounds like that worked for you.

The dentist mentioned she had tablets she could give me to calm me down and they will assess this when I go in for the cleaning - ie. see how I react to that.
She showed me the tools they will use and I didn't feel scared at all but that might be because I knew it wasn't happening imminently.

Anyway, thanks for your nice, positive post. Has given me hope!

@conxray
I was offered the same thing with sedation and like you, I knew it wouldn't help with the long term stuff! I was forced to face my fear because I had a couple of teeth break in my mouth but I was 16/17 when this happened. My teeth got very bad in my teenage years, I'm now in my late twenties so it took about ten years to get to this point.
Tiny steps definitely work and cleaning is a good thing to start with. The pills I took used to make me feel chilled out and I even found the sound of the drill funny so it helped a lot!
You should definitely feel so proud of yourself for having the strength to face your fear and you will be able to do this! Have faith in yourself and good luck. I'll be cheering you on :)

Thank you everyone for the kind words. I'll report back as things progress!

You'll be fine. You can totally handle it. Put earphones in and listen to music if you like. You'll be bored if anything.

If they get almost to the end of the decay, sometimes they switch to the older fashioned slower drill. It is much louder and makes your whole head vibrate but again doesn't hurt. Just a lot of buzzing, pulling around and scraping. They push quite hard when pressing the filling material into place so don't be alarmed. It makes me laugh because I slide up the chair a bit.

If its a white filling, they stick a uv light in your mouth for a few seconds to set it. You will also have a small piece of red paper put over it and told to bite down and slide your teeth side to side. This is to check if the filling is too high. If it get red marks on it then those bits are too high and will be gently filed down with either a scraper or a drill.

Xrays you just have to hold a bit of film still in your mouth for a minute. Uncomfortable but not painful.

Root canals are also fine, if you can handle a filling, you can handle a root canal. From your perspective its basically just a long filling. They aren't traumatic and painful like they used to be 20 years ago.

Really helpful description thank you.
I don't know why people haven't told me stuff like this before instead of just repeating horror stories which just made everything worse.

Yep a lot of the horror stories is people talking about treatment they got on a budget twenty years ago.

My partner has issues with his teeth that have meant he's needed things like root canals lots of times, and the difference in tolerability over the last few decades is phenomenal. Treatment has really evolved. Nowadays when he gets work done, the hardest part is dealing with the boredom 😂

The practice had a completely different feel to the last one I was in 30 years ago. The room was light and airy. There wasn't much scary equipment lying around. The chair was actually comfortable and not intimidating.

You will also notice a smell almost like burning. Like when you file your nails with an electric nail file. It's totally normal, it's from the drill, it's just because it's so fast. If it stresses you out they can use the slower (bumpy) drill which is noisier but doesn't smell as much.

I'm just trying to think if there's anything else that might help to be pre-warned about.

Oh yeah. Don't move during the injection because if it drips on your tongue it tastes revolting.

They may use a matrix which is a metal band on a long metal handle that they slip around the tooth they are working on and tighten. This is to contain the filling material to the tooth they are working on so it doesn't get on the adjacent tooth and to support it while they fill it if it is fragile. Looks scary and pinches the gums a bit but is pretty harmless really.

They'll likely spray water and suction it away again throughout so they can see what they're doing. You'll get a very cool pair of goggles to wear.

The filling will feel rough and funny at first but will soon wear smooth and don't be alarmed if it aches for a couple of weeks after. It's just recovering from being pulled about, like when you have braces tightened.

Updating my thread: I had the scale and polish done.
For the first time in 30 years I have been free of the constant thoughts and panic attacks about the fucking dentist.
It was strange really!
On the day I felt very stressed but at no point did it tip over into panic.
When I got into the chair I felt the stress levels rising - they gave me a stress ball and let me hold the assistant's hands. The dentist showed me the suction tools and used them in my mouth so I could get the feel of them. I was very worried about the scaler tool as it looked horrible.
So we agreed that she would use it for two minutes and stop but it was fine! It really was. I felt tense most of the time but never panicky. After she'd done the lower teeth we had a 5 minute break and then did the upper.
While she was doing it I kept thinking I can't believe I'm here and actually letting someone do something with my teeth.

She said again they are very good - I have less decay than the vast majority of people my age. Fillings in 4 molars are needed and that's it.

So back in 3 weeks for one filling. I think I can do it. Bit nervous about the injection and the noise of the drill but the rest of it seems fine.

I cannot believe that I'm not having panic attacks about this. The dentist can't believe it either but it's her lovely manner which has helped.
She sussed out in a few minutes at the initial consultation that my issue was with feeling like the situation was out of my control - I didn't really know what was triggering it - but she's right. It's because of the way I was dealt with as a youngster in puberty when it all really kicked off.

Feeling positive. All the horrible discoloration on my front teeth wasn't decay.... she got it all off with the descaler...no cavities underneath.

A BIG well done to you!!

Funny isn’t it, when you face your fears in time you look back and think what was all the fuss, but at the time it’s like life and death!

I have a needle phobia, avoided the dentist, I’m not having a needle put in my mouth when I don’t even like being in the room with them, couldn’t think of a worse nightmare!

Once I was in agony, unbelievable pain, went In there crying because it hurt so much, they said they needed to numb it, I was like no just pull it out but they wouldn’t without the needle, I did it….and didn’t feel a thing, typical! All that avoidance and worry for nothing!

Now I’m ok at the dentist but still need to hold the helpers hand when they do the needle bit (because I’m a baby) 😂

Well done! I'm so happy to hear you got the cleaning done :) In some ways that is worse because when they do a filling, they numb it and you don't feel it, so if you can do that, you can do anything!
None of it is as bad as it sounds, it just always feels worse thinking about so by getting on with it, you're doing exactly the right thing.
Good luck with your first filling!