• Dental Phobia Support

    Welcome! This is an online support group for anyone who is has a severe fear of the dentist or dental treatment. Please note that this is NOT a general dental problems or health anxiety forum! You can find a list of them here.

    Register now to access all the features of the forum.

Horrendous experience with temazepam!

P

pinkyminx

Junior member
Joined
Sep 27, 2010
Messages
2
Dear All,

I am new to this forum, and found it during a googling session trying to find out whether the experience I had at the dentist last week was 'normal'! I am perhaps not fully 'phobic' of the dentist as I can make it through the door without freaking out etc, but when it comes to injections and pain in my gums and mouth, I just go to pieces! I went last month for first check-up in 3 years, and she did a scale and polish. I was bleeding all over the place and it really hurt cos my gums were a bit crap. She said I also needed 4 fillings (gulp) and that it would be a good idea to do it under 'conscious sedation'. I wholeheartedly agreed! She said she prefered to do this using a liquid form of Temazepam.

So, I dutifully went along to my appointment last Wednesday, and drank my dose of temazepam (a very sweet, minty solution), about 10ml. After 15 mins i wasn't feeling a bit sleepy or any different at all, so she gave me another 10ml. Another 20 mins, still no effect, and by then she wanted to get started. So she squired ANOTHER 10ml into my mouth via a syringe, and got started with the local anaesthetic. By this time the topical anaesthatic the nurse had applied to my gums 40 minutes earlier had totally worn off, and so I underwent her very rough injections with no pain control and no sedation whatsoever- I still felt totally wide awake and aware, and petrified! I went through the ceiling- I was shrieking with pain, sobbing, and the nurse kept having to push my legs down as I was going a bit foetal by that point! She also had to force my mouth open because I was crying so much that my mouth was closing and I was gritting my teeth together. She managed to leak a bit of the aneasthetic in my mouth, which made me gag- I asked to rinse but was ingored. I presume at this point she assumed I was gaga.

I can recall every part of the treatment, when she had assured me I wouldn't be able to remember any of it. The bit I don't recall is being taken to another room to sleep after, or the cab journey home with my boyfriend - so obviously the drug DID have the desired effect, but was not given long enough to work by the dentist! Also, she said I would be fine to go to work as normal the next day, but when i woke up the following morning I was very unsteady and weepy, and after an aborted attempt at having a shower I had to go back to bed while my boyfriend called in sick for me. As an optometrist, this meant an entire day of patients to be cancelled, a huge incovenience.

Overall I'm really unhappy with what happened- I specifically went to this dentist because on her website it says she specialises in people who are anxious about the dentist. She was also very expensive! What i would like to know is whether I just reacted weirdly/badly to the temazepam, and it was a freak one-off situation, or whether she did not follow normal protocol with the use of this sedative. Also the dose she gave me seems huge- I read there is 10mg of temazepam per 5ml of liquid, and I think I had 30ml altogether, making the total dose 60mg! I have emailed her with my complaint, but not heard back from her yet....

Any feedback would be really appreciated. I just feel that once she saw that i was still very much aware and very distressed during the treatment, she should have stopped and waited for the sedation to take effect. Maybe I'm just being a big pansy??!

Many thanks,

Sophie
 
Last edited by a moderator:
:welcome:
No, you are not being a big pansy at all. I'm not dentally qualified but would ask you if you yourself would treat a patient similarly as an optometrist? Presumably not, so nor should she. Lots of things in your account trouble me. Especially this bit: I was shrieking with pain, sobbing, and the nurse kept having to push my legs down as I was going a bit foetal by that point! She also had to force my mouth open because I was crying so much that my mouth was closing and I was gritting my teeth together.'

FWIW I would strongly advise you to find a dentist with painfree technique for the administration of the local anaesthetic (maybe a dentist with TheWand if this is proving difficult conventionally) and that you have future treatment just with local or local and nitrous.
TBH if you get TLC from the person caring for you plus a painfree experience, you really are unlikely to need the sedation. You thought you did because of the unnecessarily painful cleaning experience (this was truly a warning sign for a dentist supposedly keen to work with anxious patients).

Sometimes the dentists who are so keen to sedate, are just simply rough unpersonable dentists who lack the skills to give the unsedated patient a comfortable experience...(but not always ;))

Good luck find yourself a new dentist.:grouphug:
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that, I think you're right about not needing sedation if there is no pain. I had a filling 3 years ago with another dentist (who has gone on maternity leave, hence going to this new lady!). She did a numbing gel, followed by a tiny 'pre-injection-injection', then the local. No pain at all. I actually think the latest dentist DID use a 'wand', she just stuck in my mouth and left it there while it beeped. It still boody hurt though when she stuck it in there! I'm such a baby... I can handle injections and pain elsewhere, but in my gums it just gives the willies something terrible.

But you're right, I wouldn't carry on if I had a patient who was clearly traumatised. I will wait to hear from her, see if she can justify her actions..
 
TheWand shouldn't hurt at all. The mouth and gums are one of the easier areas to do painfree injection delivery even with a normal syringe but the dentist has to use the right techniques and has to want to keep it comfortable. If you were not staying still, then I suppose anything could hurt because you'd be joggling the needle inappropriately? I still don't think it clears her though.
 
Last edited:
Hi, Pinky.
I'm sorry you had such an awful experience.

I've found out over the years that I'm resistant to any of the benzodiazepines. I might as well take a vitamin for all it's worth until AFTER whatever I'm having done is done and I'm home. Then I crash.

I do better with just nitrous when I'm really anxious.
 
Oral temazepam takes about 60mins to work, so I'm not surprised you got the best results on the way home :(

I would think that it was 10mg in 10ml, I doubt that you got 60mg and managed to walk out of the building.

Either way, there's no excuse for what happened, anyone using oral sedation has to be prepared for it failing and be prepared to abort the procedure if it does.

I really don't like oral sedation alone, it's fine as an adjunct to IV or inhalational sedation, but it's very unreliable as a sole agent.
 
Can somebody explain why my post was deleted. I was shareing an experience and posted within the forum guidelines... it's simply rude.
 
Can somebody explain why my post was deleted. I was shareing an experience and posted within the forum guidelines... it's simply rude.

Sorry my fault. It has been moved here to your own thread. Should have done a cross-reference. I moved it to avoid 'hijack' as you are describing unsedated experiences.
 
Last edited:
My appoligies, thankyou. :censored:
 
Back
Top