• 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.

Jump-out-of-skin scared, but got it done.

C

Cloudbuster

Junior member
Joined
Dec 17, 2017
Messages
1
Hello All,

I've been lurking for a month and this forum made me feel so much better about what I am going through. I
was told a month ago that I would need partial dentures. My upper front 4 teeth and a couple of molars. I knew my teeth were bad, but I didn't think they were that bad. By outward appearance, my smile was super crooked, teeth twisted, and one tooth hung lower than others which definitely needed to come out and why I booked the dental appointment in the first place. I wasn't in any pain, but I would get abscesses over that one tooth once or twice a year. I was told I had severe periodontal disease, from years of not going to the dentist. I kind of knew this so it wasn't a huge shock, but the front teeth coming out was a shock. There was significant bone loss so not even sure if I can get implants even if I could afford them (which I can't).

Finally today was the day. I was a nervous wreck. I'd been to the dentist to have my wisdom teeth extracted nearly 20 years ago and was completely knocked out for it. Last thing I remember about it was them putting on the gas mask, them injecting me intravenously, and me thinking it wasn't going to work. Then waking up being wheeled by my husband to the car. My current dentist doesn't do any sort of sedation..well nitrous..if that counts, but that's it.

So for those of you scared out of your wits, here's how it happened for me.

After I signed in, was taken back to the room where the dentist was going to do the extraction. Thankfully, they covered the tools with some sort of blue napkin, so couldn't see what they looked like. However, I saw the big syringe for the novocaine or numbing med and my imagination went wild...not in a good way and also a long swab with some pink goo on the end. My dentist was extremely nice. He gave me a little pep talk and told me that he's been doing extractions for a long time and he's pretty sure he could get me through it pain-free. He had a great chairside manner and it put me at ease somewhat. My heart was still racing though. I brought my headphones and music, so I popped it on. Loud!

He rubbed the swab around my mouth and my mouth got really numb. I almost thought I wouldn't even need injections because at that point I couldn't feel anything. I knew it was coming so I closed my eyes, because I didn't want to jump when he got close. I can't even tell you how many times I got injected because I didn't feel anything, except when he got to the hanging tooth and even that was just a tiny pinch.

He started on the back molar, I could feel the tugging, but absolutely no pain. It's like you know your tooth is being pulled, but you feel disassociated from it. There is some pressure, but again, it feels far away. I read someone's post, maybe here or elsewhere, where they said they almost fell asleep during their extractions and at first I thought that was crazy, but now I know it's true. Was super relaxed, no pain, just a little pressure for a couple of the teeth that had longer roots. One of the teeth dropped on my tongue and the dentist said I was done. I literally didn't believe him until I pressed my tongue to the front of my mouth and felt the inside of my lip instead of teeth. He even dug out some bad tissue and put in stitches, still painless.

After that, they took me off the gas and had me wait a little bit before putting in the partial denture. This was the tedious part. They kept having to put it in and take out to adjust. The partial itself feels weird. It feels like taffy is stuck to the back part of my front teeth and I can't get it off. It only covers part of my palate, so I don't have any of the gagging sensations people talk about like maybe with full uppers. It has the metal clasps that fits around my upper back molars. I think my new smile looks a little weird, much better, but a little strange. Dentist wants me to keep them in til tomorrow afternoon and do salt water rinses 2 or 3 times a day. I took an ibuprofen before I left for the dentist this morning and had two before I left. It's now 5 hours later and I'm still pain free, knock on wood, but waiting for it to come down like a hammer. Hopefully I can stave it off by popping these Advil down my gullet ever 5 hours.

Anyway, just want to thank this forum for being my anxiety reliever for the past month or so and I hope this helps someone else out there petrified of having this done. The only thing that sucks so far is that I timed this all wrong and will probably miss out on all the good holiday food.:cry:
 
Back
Top