I tried to deal with my dental phobia but I feel like I’m failing.

[Gollygosh]

For me trying to deal with the phobia began when my health anxiety surrounding a failed root canal I had became too great to ignore. I found a phobia friendly dentist and mustered up the courage to go. They told me the same thing I’d been told years earlier, I needed a repeat root canal performed by an endodontist. The idea of needing to see another dentist and sitting through that long of a procedure overwhelmed me entirely so I asked about extraction as an alternative. They tried to persuade me against it but I knew deep down it was what I wanted. I was too afraid if I did get a repeat root canal that it would fail again, or that I wouldn’t be able to get myself to go through all the stages of treatment. I didn’t go back in true phobic fashion until my problem tooth cracked and I could no longer chew on it without a stabbing sensation. I was absolutely terrified but I knew I couldn’t just leave it broken and wiggling in my mouth. My dentist was fantastic and empathetic about it and scheduled me in to have it removed no questioned ask.
This is where things start to get worse for me. I managed to make it in but the process of getting it pulled was pretty awful if I’m honest. I don’t know what specifically went wrong but what I was told would take 15 minutes took 40-50. My dentist also seemed to largely ignore that there was a person attached to the mouth during the extraction. I don’t think this is how they usually treat patients, I think that it was just my tooth was much more difficult than they’d anticipated to remove and they were trying to focus on getting it done, but none the less I started to feel very out of control. At one point my cheek was nicked by one of the tools which hurt, but I didn’t feel like I could speak up about it. They did notice what had happened themselves at one point and placed a sort of guard in my mouth to prevent it from happening again, but that just made me feel like I was choking, and for me that was worse than being nicked by the tool in the first place. We hadn’t agreed on a signal that meant stop and even if we had I don’t know if I would’ve felt comfortable using it. Another issue I was having was with holding my jaw open, I have a really tight and sometimes problematic tmj and so keeping my mouth held open started becoming difficult but again, I felt like I had no space to try and voice this to them.

By the end I was starting to feel some twinges of pain as stitches where being placed, and the pain only worsened from there. (I don’t know if this is normal or whether the anesthetic wore off too quickly, so might post a seperate question about it somewhere) By the time I got home I was in agony. The pain only got worse and by night and I was struggling to sleep. By day three I’d tried to contact an emergency dentist for an appointment as my dentist was on vacation, but the pain was making my dental fear even worse and I was scared of seeing a new dentist at a practice I wasn’t familiar with, so I just ended up trying to deal with it alone. I woke up every night crying from the pain for about a week and was taking both paracetamol and ibuprofen every four hours. We had left over OxyContin in the house from a past surgery and so I tried taking that as well, but it did absolutely nothing for the pain. I believe I might have developed an infection because of the stitches which could’ve been the source of my extreme pain? (TMI but there was a glob of yellow gunk stuck to the stitches that I had to clean off, and after that the pain seemed to slowly get better) Or maybe it was dry socket?
Anyway I feel as though this experience has set me back even further with my fear, and I haven’t gone back since the extraction (which has thankfully healed normally, for the most part.) which was about six months ago now.
So of course now would be the perfect time for another molar to be causing me issues. I have a small abscess on my gums over the root of a tooth, and it’s been sensitive when I bite down for a few months or so on and off, and I know from experience an abscess on the gums over the root generally means a root canal or extraction, and I just don’t know how I’m ever going to face a root canal or an extraction or even a dentist again after all this. So many fears keep circulating in my head like, what if I can’t keep my jaw open again, or what if I end up in agony again or what if, what if, what if. I’m terrified.

 

[lleigh26]

Hi Gollygosh

I’m So Sorry You Have Had To Experience All What You Went Through.. It Sounds Like It Was Awful!! I Understand Your Fears Because I Have Been There In Some Similar Circumstances.. I Think The Best Way To Deal With Things That You Fear Is To Find A Dentist That You Can Trust.. I Know This Is Hard But It Could Help To Maybe Contact People You Know.. & See Who They Might Recommend..? I Hope This Helps.. ? xx

 

[Enarete]

Hi Gollygosh ,

your past experience sounds so traumatic, you would have to be a piece of stone to be able to go back after that. Wow. It looks like everything that possibly can go wrong during a treatment, did - you felt entirely out of control, the dentist and staff seemed not to care, you experienced choking sensations, was hurt, had no stop signal (even more loss of control), felt frozen by fear, had pain during the treatment and was in agony afterwards and left alone with it as your dentist was on a vacation. Considering that any situation with pain, loss of control, helplessness and intense fear can be labeled as trauma, I see how you don't see yourself being able to get back. Do you have any plan about how to tackle the tooth that is bothering you now?

 

[Gollygosh]

Hi Gollygosh ,

your past experience sounds so traumatic, you would have to be a piece of stone to be able to go back after that. Wow. It looks like everything that possibly can go wrong during a treatment, did - you felt entirely out of control, the dentist and staff seemed not to care, you experienced choking sensations, was hurt, had no stop signal (even more loss of control), felt frozen by fear, had pain during the treatment and was in agony afterwards and left alone with it as your dentist was on a vacation. Considering that any situation with pain, loss of control, helplessness and intense fear can be labeled as trauma, I see how you don't see yourself being able to get back. Do you have any plan about how to tackle the tooth that is bothering you now?

It really was a less than ideal situation, and it’s such a shame it happened the way it did because she seems to have had so much success with other phobic patients in the past. I’m in two minds about it. Part of me wants to start from scratch with a different dentist, but I also really don’t want the added stress of needing to meet a new dentist and familiarise myself with them and their practice etc. The other part of me just wants to get it over and done with as soon as possible and seeing the dentist that preformed my extraction would be easier in that regard as she has X-rays etc from previous appointments. And then of course there’s that voice of the back of my head saying “just wait a few weeks you don’t have to deal with it now” but I know a few weeks will turn into months etc until it gets so bad I don’t have any other option but to go. It’s just so difficult.

 

[Gollygosh]

So it’s been over 3 years since I posted the original thread, and I didn’t go back. I did what I do best and avoided it. So I guess the title of my original post was true, I was/did fail to improve my dental phobia. Honestly, after that extraction experience, the fear just got so much worse. I don’t think I’d fully processed how truely upsetting that experience was to me until I posted here and had my feelings validated by others.

Anyway, my gums are what brought me back to this forum. I have pretty bad recession in my bottom front two teeth with a minor amount of root exposure, my gums are loose around the tooth, my teeth have began to shift, and there ever so slightly wobbly (I acknowledge I may be pathologising normal movement here but can’t help but question if it’s normal). This all came to a head the other day when I finally got up the courage to prod around my own gum line more aggressively. I do floss daily, but I try to avoid thinking about it or looking too closely. I knew prior to prodding around that the recession had been slowly but surely progressing, but I wanted to write it off as JUST recession and not periodontitis. But once I prodded, I realised how loose my gums had become around the tooth, how deep the pockets were, and it provoked some bleeding. I’m now terrified I have periodontitis that won’t be solved through home care. It’s been in the back of my head for years that I probably have tartar beyond the gum line (I haven’t had a clean in longer than I can remember), and that no amount of flossing is going to improve, but I didn’t want to accept it.

I broke down in tears after that. I already have pain in two of my molars (the molar I talk about in the first post of course only got worse), pain in my jaw on and off that I’m sure is related to some hidden wisdom teeth, a loose filling, a missing tooth, and now I’m afraid of inevitably losing my front teeth without intervention, and I’m no where near ready to face any of it.


Bit of a side tangent, but when I met my boyfriend, he hadn’t been to the dentist since he was a child. He also didn’t have all that great oral hygiene either. He wasn’t phobic, he just didn’t have parents that stressed the importance of dentist visits. I coaxed him into going to the dentist as his tartar buildup was crazy and his breath wasn’t great. I think seeing me struggle with all these issues was what really convinced him to start taking his dental health seriously, and so he went.


He didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a single cavity, and his teeth and gums are healthy. I’m so happy for him, but at the same time I feel so unlucky. Here I am with arguably much better oral hygiene than he has, and still I’m the one with all the problems.


I’m not ready to face my fears in the slightest right now. I have so much going on with my mental health independent of this (no surprises but I have severe agoraphobia and social anxiety) but I just needed to vent this out in a place that I know understands. I’m going to be more diligent with my dental hygiene from here on out, maybe get a water pick and buy some interdental brushes and hope it helps improve things. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but at least it gives me some sense of control; even if it is illusionary.