S
StuckInIndia
Junior member
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2022
- Messages
- 7
- Location
- India
My fear started as a child. An inferior alveolar block caused a lingual nerve injury which caused me pain, electric like shocks, transient pins and needles and numbness in my tongue on that sude for the better part of 2 years. It never did fully heal and when I move my jaw certain ways I still get shocks. I was 12 when it happened and 47 now.
Any injections near the back of my mouth (think all blocks) since then, send my jaw muscles into spasms and horrible trismus (meaning unable to open my jaw) requiring physiotherapy to get my jaw working again. This was painful as they shove tongue depressors in one by one to forcefully open my jaw.
As a result in my teens I started refusing local anesthetic and demanding nitrous oxide (the only sedation I knew at the time) the nitrous made it so I could mentally block out the pain of drilling. Even in my 20s for a root canal.... sans local.
Since then I learned about IV sedation (love it) and also oral meds or oral meds and nitrous together. More recently I find myself in India and for some reason Indian dentists dont believe in patient comfort. At least for us dental phobes. I had to beg for oral meds alone as nobody uses nitrous oxide or IV sedation. I told the dentist which med was used (triazolam) and the dose however turns out India has an issue with meds that can be abused and triazolam is not even in the market. She gave me Xanax. Even when I looked up the equivalent dose, Xanax doesnt work the same way as Halcion (triazolam) no amnesia, and barely any sedative effect. Like I was 100% aware and 100% awake. Sucked. Because of that I could not block out the drilling pain very well so now that experience is etched in my mind (and dreams) I did tell her she could use ONLY PDL injections or intraosseus injections because the numb feeling in cheeks, lips, tongue etc sends me into panic attacks because of that lingual nerve injury memory. PDL and intraosseus are supposed to only numb a single tooth with no collateral soft tissue numbing. I do think she tried PDL in one front upper tooth (cosmetic crowns to straighten my smile so I know its my own doing since it wasnt totally necessary) anyway the pdl injection didnt work anyway (maybe not enough time to kick in)
Point being I need to find an alternative medication in India that will cause anterograde amnesia and adequate sedation. One that India hasnt already tried to ban or make you jump through 1000 hoops to fill the prescription. Oh and forget pain meds at all. Diclofenic and paracetamol is all youll get even after major surgery or kidney stones.
Anyway the lingual nerve injury did it for me. A supposedly harmless injection left me in pain and with altered sensation for almost 2 years and still to this day that nerve is messed up. I wish fir all the advances we have in medicine why cant we find an alternative to injectable anesthetics?
Any injections near the back of my mouth (think all blocks) since then, send my jaw muscles into spasms and horrible trismus (meaning unable to open my jaw) requiring physiotherapy to get my jaw working again. This was painful as they shove tongue depressors in one by one to forcefully open my jaw.
As a result in my teens I started refusing local anesthetic and demanding nitrous oxide (the only sedation I knew at the time) the nitrous made it so I could mentally block out the pain of drilling. Even in my 20s for a root canal.... sans local.
Since then I learned about IV sedation (love it) and also oral meds or oral meds and nitrous together. More recently I find myself in India and for some reason Indian dentists dont believe in patient comfort. At least for us dental phobes. I had to beg for oral meds alone as nobody uses nitrous oxide or IV sedation. I told the dentist which med was used (triazolam) and the dose however turns out India has an issue with meds that can be abused and triazolam is not even in the market. She gave me Xanax. Even when I looked up the equivalent dose, Xanax doesnt work the same way as Halcion (triazolam) no amnesia, and barely any sedative effect. Like I was 100% aware and 100% awake. Sucked. Because of that I could not block out the drilling pain very well so now that experience is etched in my mind (and dreams) I did tell her she could use ONLY PDL injections or intraosseus injections because the numb feeling in cheeks, lips, tongue etc sends me into panic attacks because of that lingual nerve injury memory. PDL and intraosseus are supposed to only numb a single tooth with no collateral soft tissue numbing. I do think she tried PDL in one front upper tooth (cosmetic crowns to straighten my smile so I know its my own doing since it wasnt totally necessary) anyway the pdl injection didnt work anyway (maybe not enough time to kick in)
Point being I need to find an alternative medication in India that will cause anterograde amnesia and adequate sedation. One that India hasnt already tried to ban or make you jump through 1000 hoops to fill the prescription. Oh and forget pain meds at all. Diclofenic and paracetamol is all youll get even after major surgery or kidney stones.
Anyway the lingual nerve injury did it for me. A supposedly harmless injection left me in pain and with altered sensation for almost 2 years and still to this day that nerve is messed up. I wish fir all the advances we have in medicine why cant we find an alternative to injectable anesthetics?
