Emergency appointment helped make the first step!

[Katy_b123]

hey! im new here but i have been using this site as support for a while. Untill today i hadnt been to the dentist in 6 years (im 21 now), and just had this awful fear of the dentist since i was shamed for having bad teeth that last time i went for a check up.

I wont go into too much detail but basically ive got cavities, 1 really really bad, 1 broken tooth with half a filling just sticking out of it, and generally just a bit of a sad looking smile (although my teeth are perfectly straight, funnily enough).. the bad cavity has been playing on my mind constantly for about 3 years, but the fear of going to the dentist was just too great, and though im not really sure what i'm afraid of, i thought it was just easier to just ignore what was happening.

so about 2 weeks ago i started getting this awful toothache down below my bad tooth, and id had this type of pain before a few years ago but i took pain killers and just ignored it (as usual) and it went away within a few days. So i was hoping this would just happen again and it DID! till yesterday when the swelling started..oh the SWELLING! luckily i had no pain but this is something i just couldnt hide, it looked like i was trying to eat a golf ball on one side of my cheek! So i met my fear head on and rang the emergency clinic and booked myself in for this afternoon.

It was terrifying in the waiting room, but the receptionist was really friendly and offered me a glass of water. Then i was called in. The receptionist was also the dentists assistant so this reassured me. I was pretty tearful and shaky at this point and asked if we could just have a talk first. I explained my fears, and what happened at my last appointment. She said it sounds like i just had an infection and that antibiotics would be my first course of treatment but she did want to have a look in my mouth and do some x-rays, which im glad she did because she actually found a few problems that were going on under the surface of some of my teeth, one particularly bad, and these were things i knew nothing about!! It was also good to hear that although i did have some problems, it wasnt anything obscure, and that she had seen and treated other patients successfully who had much worse problems than me!

So i was feeling pretty good by this point, and then i guess she felt this because she offered to do part of my root canal surgery right THEN! i was a bit panicy but after some glucose water i relaxed and decided that this was the best way to ease myself back into it. I wont lie, it was a little uncomfortable having the injections, but not half as bad as i thought it would be, and for me personally it was a little more difficult because of all the swelling. She drilled and scraped around for a little while, and i listen to some music through headphones and soon found myself drifting into my imagination and not thinking about what was happening. there were some times when i was uncomfortable and i just put my hand up and she stopped to asses the situation and give me more pain killers!

Overall i feel it was a successful trip and i feel lucky that i was forced into this because i had such a bad problem that i couldnt ignore any more! Im glad ive been told about my other problems and that they are easy enough to fix because they were caught in time. I am nervous about my next visit in a weeks time but it felt like only 5 minutes ago i was reading on here for support before my appointment and now ITS OVER!!

Good luck to you all and i hope you can somehow find the strength to face your fears because it really isnt as bad as you think and you can catch other problems that are starting without you even realising!! BREAK THE CYCLE!!!