R
recalcitrantSoloist
Junior member
- Joined
- May 1, 2026
- Messages
- 2
- Location
- Heath, Ohio.
I'm a 20 year old ftm trans man who's always struggled with hygiene, mostly of the dental variety. I had a very abusive childhood, and a very young (19 y/o) mother who never took the time to cement healthy habits into me under the assumption I'd just "know" to do it or grow into it. The abuse triggered what feels like a lifelong affliction of dissociation and apathy towards my own health and wellbeing. I first saw a therapist when I was thirteen years old, under court recommendation. I was struggling with my gender identity which I didn't have the language for at the time being raised very sheltered and religious, which made it feel like a very useless endeavor. I only attended for about nine months before I was pulled out.
I got worse as I got older, and the dissociation felt like it took over my life completely. Anytime I wasn't distracted, I was agonizing over my inevitable death and what followed. In middleschool and highschool, I was so anxious and irritable and hopeless that I'd walk home almost everyday and collapse against the door just to cry for reasons I didn't even understand. I started bedrotting because I couldn't think of a single reason to climb out of bed if not for the sole purpose of keeping myself alive. I had issues with my teeth ever since I was ten, but they really amped up once I hit my teens and became so preoccupied with relationships and drama and homework and shitty teachers and awful peers.
I was taken to a dentist's office that honestly was one of the worst experiences of my life. The sedation barely worked, the nurses(?) were extremely snappy and rude, carelessly jabbing around with a scalpel inside of my root canal and then glowering at me for crying at the pain, the dentist kept trying to "reassure" me by calling me "good girl" (I was 18 at the time, and informed them of my distaste for feminine terms ahead of time, and it certainly didn't help that I had PTSD from childhood sexual abuse), they accidentally dropped tiny metal things into the back of my mouth multiple times mid operation, they stretched the corners of my mouth so wide that I was left with dehydrated sores for two weeks after the fact, they hardly let me have any breaks at all even though my procedures were around three hours long per visit (I was scheduled for three or four of them), and that's just all that I can remember through what an upsetting and blurry experience that was.
Needless to say, they left a lot of unfinished work for the "next visit(s)" that they never got to patch up, because I refused to return. I think that experience alone was enough to traumatize me from ever seeking dental help again. Smelling or hearing the equipment, such as the sickly cherry smell of the numbing agent or the sound of the drill, is enough to instantly bring me to tears and just make me breakdown. Another attempt to get work done my mom encouraged me to take at a different clinic ended with them examining the state of my mouth and then turning me away as I was sobbing over a check-up where they weren't planning on working on me anyway.
They told me that they did not have the appropriate licensing to administer the amount of anesthesia I would need to be operated on, both for the procedure itself and to calm me enough to operate on in the first place. She gave me a referral to what I think was the county hospital closest to me. My mother insisted on holding onto it for me, because I am only twenty and probably shouldn't be trusted to keep a hold of those documents either, but now my mother has "lost" the document.
I kind of doubt that she did, she's very particular about "keeping things in order." I sort of suspect she is maybe just pretending to have lost it so I "suck it up" and go back to the cheaper dental clinic that traumatized me in the first place. I don't really "blame" her if that IS the case, but I'm equally stumped on what to do. We don't have the greatest health insurance, we're sort of financially struggling at the moment, but I physically cannot force myself to go back to that place.
However, it's getting to the point where my teeth are chipping little by little every other week. One of my bottom left molars sort of just, caved in? I have holes in my bottom right molars. My top right canine feels awkward and numb in my mouth, and I'm pretty sure I can feel a crack running along 70% of the middle, indicating that I'm pretty sure it'll be the next to crack off and completely obliterate any feigned sense of "normalcy" I could possible try to cling to. My top right.. pre-incisor(?) chipped off the front about ten months ago and has been slowly softening and bending over time.
It's to the point I feel like I can't brush my teeth even if I wanted to, because my fucked up teeth could just chip and fall out at any time with moderate pressure, and I have no idea where to go from here. I feel like I'm rotting constantly, and I'm too disgusted with myself to even leave the house more than once every two months. It's affecting my relationship, I feel too gross in my own skin to even show affection the way I once did, and I know they feel it too. I just feel so fucking stuck and frustrated that I'm JUST starting to become "an adult" and I'm spending my "best years" as a socially anxious shut-in who can't go out in public because they're mortified by how ugly they look.
I was back in therapy for about two years when I was seventeen to nineteen, before my lack of motivation caused me to just stop showing up after my original therapist moved. But he suspected a whole list of possible diagnoses from the DSM-5—PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, BPD, ADHD, OSDD, and he spoke about many of my symptoms lining up with level 1 Autism. (It also runs in my family.)
All of this huge word vomit in mind, is there anybody who has any idea where you start this process from the perspective of a broke 20 y/o with no job, no license, no decent health insurance, and a family-sized variety pack of mental health disorders? Sorry if this is a little dark for the forum, I'm very new here and unaccustomed to this environment. I'm looking for general anesthesia if it's in any way possible, because I believe being actually unconscious is the only way I could endure my procedures which I know would be extremely long and painful and plentiful.
I got worse as I got older, and the dissociation felt like it took over my life completely. Anytime I wasn't distracted, I was agonizing over my inevitable death and what followed. In middleschool and highschool, I was so anxious and irritable and hopeless that I'd walk home almost everyday and collapse against the door just to cry for reasons I didn't even understand. I started bedrotting because I couldn't think of a single reason to climb out of bed if not for the sole purpose of keeping myself alive. I had issues with my teeth ever since I was ten, but they really amped up once I hit my teens and became so preoccupied with relationships and drama and homework and shitty teachers and awful peers.
I was taken to a dentist's office that honestly was one of the worst experiences of my life. The sedation barely worked, the nurses(?) were extremely snappy and rude, carelessly jabbing around with a scalpel inside of my root canal and then glowering at me for crying at the pain, the dentist kept trying to "reassure" me by calling me "good girl" (I was 18 at the time, and informed them of my distaste for feminine terms ahead of time, and it certainly didn't help that I had PTSD from childhood sexual abuse), they accidentally dropped tiny metal things into the back of my mouth multiple times mid operation, they stretched the corners of my mouth so wide that I was left with dehydrated sores for two weeks after the fact, they hardly let me have any breaks at all even though my procedures were around three hours long per visit (I was scheduled for three or four of them), and that's just all that I can remember through what an upsetting and blurry experience that was.
Needless to say, they left a lot of unfinished work for the "next visit(s)" that they never got to patch up, because I refused to return. I think that experience alone was enough to traumatize me from ever seeking dental help again. Smelling or hearing the equipment, such as the sickly cherry smell of the numbing agent or the sound of the drill, is enough to instantly bring me to tears and just make me breakdown. Another attempt to get work done my mom encouraged me to take at a different clinic ended with them examining the state of my mouth and then turning me away as I was sobbing over a check-up where they weren't planning on working on me anyway.
They told me that they did not have the appropriate licensing to administer the amount of anesthesia I would need to be operated on, both for the procedure itself and to calm me enough to operate on in the first place. She gave me a referral to what I think was the county hospital closest to me. My mother insisted on holding onto it for me, because I am only twenty and probably shouldn't be trusted to keep a hold of those documents either, but now my mother has "lost" the document.
I kind of doubt that she did, she's very particular about "keeping things in order." I sort of suspect she is maybe just pretending to have lost it so I "suck it up" and go back to the cheaper dental clinic that traumatized me in the first place. I don't really "blame" her if that IS the case, but I'm equally stumped on what to do. We don't have the greatest health insurance, we're sort of financially struggling at the moment, but I physically cannot force myself to go back to that place.
However, it's getting to the point where my teeth are chipping little by little every other week. One of my bottom left molars sort of just, caved in? I have holes in my bottom right molars. My top right canine feels awkward and numb in my mouth, and I'm pretty sure I can feel a crack running along 70% of the middle, indicating that I'm pretty sure it'll be the next to crack off and completely obliterate any feigned sense of "normalcy" I could possible try to cling to. My top right.. pre-incisor(?) chipped off the front about ten months ago and has been slowly softening and bending over time.
It's to the point I feel like I can't brush my teeth even if I wanted to, because my fucked up teeth could just chip and fall out at any time with moderate pressure, and I have no idea where to go from here. I feel like I'm rotting constantly, and I'm too disgusted with myself to even leave the house more than once every two months. It's affecting my relationship, I feel too gross in my own skin to even show affection the way I once did, and I know they feel it too. I just feel so fucking stuck and frustrated that I'm JUST starting to become "an adult" and I'm spending my "best years" as a socially anxious shut-in who can't go out in public because they're mortified by how ugly they look.
I was back in therapy for about two years when I was seventeen to nineteen, before my lack of motivation caused me to just stop showing up after my original therapist moved. But he suspected a whole list of possible diagnoses from the DSM-5—PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, BPD, ADHD, OSDD, and he spoke about many of my symptoms lining up with level 1 Autism. (It also runs in my family.)
All of this huge word vomit in mind, is there anybody who has any idea where you start this process from the perspective of a broke 20 y/o with no job, no license, no decent health insurance, and a family-sized variety pack of mental health disorders? Sorry if this is a little dark for the forum, I'm very new here and unaccustomed to this environment. I'm looking for general anesthesia if it's in any way possible, because I believe being actually unconscious is the only way I could endure my procedures which I know would be extremely long and painful and plentiful.
