• Dental Phobia Support

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Abscess problems - support welcomed

S

scotsman44

Junior member
Joined
Mar 5, 2010
Messages
10
Dear all,
I was relieved to find this site as it seems I am not totally hopeless in having serious dental issues.
Due to a terrible dentist as a child I have been terrified of dental treatment all my life. It is now a shocking amount of time since I was last at a dentist (over 20 years). In the meantime, I have lost fillings, lost a crown which left a plugged post in my mouth, and over the last few years had bits of my lower front teeth crack away. Every time I say I will have it addressed, but as people on here know, as things get worse it becomes harder to face seeing someone. I do NOT want to be judged by a dentist for being so neglectful.
However, in the last few weeks a portion of the back of my lower front tooth has come away. There's no pain, as I suspect that the root has died anyway due to decay, but in the last few weeks I have had increasing dull headaches, occasional feverishness, and a general sense of being extremely run down. Certainly much more so than normal. I'm sure that there's some kind of abscess there, if not in more than that tooth, and now concerned it will be serious if not properly treated. But I don't have a dentist and am terrified of how bad the surgery might be.
Has anyone had similar problems, and are my dental issues a lost case?
Any thoughts would be very welcomed.
 
:welcome:
Hi, welcome we all understand how you feel, you are not alone here.

Your teeth sound very much like mine were/are, I too had a lot of broken and rotton looking teeth and I can totally understand the feelings of shame. But it is possible to get past them, my dentist has been wonderful about not judging me for what I allowed to happen in my mouth and we are working together to made it healthy in there again.

The trigger for me to finally get this problem sorted out was my first ever abscess. I have never had pain like it. No amount of painkillers helped and I spen the whole night awake from it. I knew then that I had to do something. From what you describe it doesn't sound like an abscess like mine, but as I said that was the only one I've had.

So far all my recient experiences of the dentist are so far removed from my treatment 25 years ago that I cannot really compare them. The modern treatment I have had has been totally pain free, the LA works, I don't even feel it being given. I'm currently free of pain as I've had some temporary dressing put on the worst teeth until I can get around to fixing them properly, this releif from pain is a fantastic feeling, it was also very easy to have done. Being free of pain allows me to make rational decisions about my treatment plus I can go at a much slower pace so that I don't feel out of control or rushed into things I'm not ready for. I'm getting my mouth healty again one tiny step at a time, you can too.

The inital shame you feel about your mouth only lasts for the very first time you allow the dentist to see in there, that really has been the worst part to get past. I had to do it by showing the dentist my teeth in a mirror rather than be laying under them, this let me control the speed of what she saw. Every visit to the dentist after that initial one will get easier and I can honestly say that the treatment is totally different from what I had in the past.
 
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