S
shammerham
Junior member
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2025
- Messages
- 6
- Location
- Colorado
Hello! I've been a lurker for the past six months and want to thank everyone for sharing their stories. It made me feel less alone in my own journey with dental anxiety.
I'm not sure anyone will read this, but I'm Going Through Itâ„¢ and hoping some journaling will help.
For starters, my parents were great at taking me to the dentist when I was a kid. Even when we were broke, I got braces and cavities filled, cleanings before the school year, etc. because my dad had terrible teeth due to his parents neglecting his dental health and didn't want us to go through what he did as an adult with all of his various treatments. I never had a problem with a dentist even though I was iffy on my brushing habits at best and it never scared me to go to my annual visits. I even got my wisdom teeth extracted under sedation with no issues or extra drama.
Flash forward to adulthood. After getting kicked off my parents' insurance (yay America), I didn't go to the dentist for four years because of COVID and being in between various insurances for work. Again I had a history of relative no teeth issues so I wasn't stressed about the lapse in dental checkups because nothing was hurting either. I tried to book an appointment with my family dentist in July 2024 but they weren't available until November 2024. My friend had a great experience with his dentist and I figured I just needed a cleaning so it wouldn't hurt to give them a try.
The friend's dentist told me I had a failed filling from ions ago that needed a crown treatment. They showed me the X-rays and I trusted dentists at that point so I agreed to the treatment with a quoted two week recovery plan. My only red flag with them was that they tried upselling me on an optional medicine not covered by insurance to prevent cavities on a specific molar but I opted out of that treatment.
The crown treatment ended up being an incredibly traumatic incident. My gums got incredibly irritated from the temporary crown cement and when I called them for help on it on Friday morning, they couldn't get me in until that next Tuesday morning and only told me to rinse with salt water. They didn't even advise Advil for the pain but I started dosing myself with it every 8 hours thanks to the internet's suggestions and it was the only way to tolerate the pain. When I went in for my treatment that Tuesday morning, they told me my crown was ready ahead of schedule and tried to place it. Unfortunately, the crown didn't fit, but that didn't stop them from continuing to try to place it for FOUR HOURS without numbing cream until it finally got stuck and the dentist had to drill it out and remold my tooth for a new permanent crown (that part did get some numbing cream after I begged them for it).
Throughout this entire process, I was being gaslit by the friend's dentist that my gum irritation was due to already weak gums or me taking poor care of them and my crown refused to fit because the teeth next to it were crooked/rotated (as if they weren't the dentists who could've seen that BEFORE the crown treatment).
I had to wait another two weeks for another permanent crown to be made. When the second permanent crown came in, it also didn't fit. When I asked them what they were going to do to make it fit the third time, they couldn't give me a straight answer and told me they would "just keep trying" as if their first two attempts didn't cause me unbearable pain when there was no pain before the procedure. They also refused to rush the delivery on the third one, which would've been another two weeks wait.
Finally embracing my inner Karen, I chewed them out for my poor treatment (with a half numb mouth, mind you), got a refund, and then got an emergency appointment with my family dentist who miraculously could fit me in first thing the next day to finish the procedure. After working with my family dentist, it turns out not only did the friend's dentist shape my tooth wrong for crown placement, but the extreme gum irritation I was crying about (and was told was occurring because I couldn't take care of my gums) was because the dentist had left cord under my gum line during crown prep. Once my family dentist cleared out the cord, the gums healed great. My family dentist also bumped me up to three Advil a day with an occasional Tylenol for the pain for my recovery while the friend's dentist never once recommended any sort of OTC pain meds.
My family dentist has been a godsend. They ended up placing my crown and finishing the treatment within three business days when the last dentist had taken over a month to not even fix what they broke. The family dentist has also helped me with other issues such as a painful cavity on another molar and a random anxiety freakout over more irritated gums, which now makes sense why I freaked out now that I wrote out my previous trauma with it.
But while I logically trust my family dentist, my experience with the friend's dentist has left me emotionally scarred and anxious for my visits with the family dentist. I'm finding it really difficult to trust any of their diagnosis after my poor experience with the friend's dentist. Every time I feel any sort of little pain in my teeth or mouth, I panic because I worry that my family dentist missed something in their last check (like what the friend's dentist did with the cord on my gum) and I don't want to end up in that chair again only to end up in more pain after treatment or keep calling them for every little thing to ask them "are you SURE you didn't miss anything?" Like during my last visit with the family dentist at the beginning of January 2025, they said my latest pain was because I likely cut my gums with excessive flossing (thank you overcompensating for my health anxiety) and the gums were extremely irritated against a tooth that already had some minor gum recession but would likely heal with salt water rinses and rubbing Sensodyne toothpaste directly on the affected tooth. But it's now the start of February 2025 and the pain is still ongoing. Better than before, but the recovery has been incredibly slow so now I'm worried it's something more that they missed during their check up just to get my anxious butt out of their chair.
Again, logically, I know these things just take time to heal from both emotionally and physically and there are people with way worse teeth and dental experiences than me. But I really want to return to my old confidence levels with the dentist and my dental health, especially since my family dentist has been so incredibly kind and competent with all of my recent dental issues and I really want to trust them. I was working with a talk therapist for a while, but thought I would try tackling these anxieties on my own for a bit to see how I handle it.
I also would really love to start trusting the dentist again so I can stop googling things because while Google was the only thing that saved me during my experience with the friend's dentist, it has only increased my anxiety since then and I'm constantly stressed about the state of my teeth.
(Btw the friend has already switched dentists after my experience and has apologized countless times for the referral even though he had no way of knowing how bad they would be after his positive experience)
So yeah. That's my long story of why I have dental anxiety now after a lifetime of not having it and it's really putting a damper on my life when I'm constantly nervous about tooth pain (especially if it's somehow triggered on the weekend when the dentist isn't available). I hope I can have a more optimistic addition to this journal soon about my recovery. I've already made a ton of strides from when I was stuck in bed unable to do much else than Google my symptoms and watch bad movies. I really do want to trust the dentist again and stop dreading calling them so any words of wisdom or advice would be appreciated
I'm not sure anyone will read this, but I'm Going Through Itâ„¢ and hoping some journaling will help.
For starters, my parents were great at taking me to the dentist when I was a kid. Even when we were broke, I got braces and cavities filled, cleanings before the school year, etc. because my dad had terrible teeth due to his parents neglecting his dental health and didn't want us to go through what he did as an adult with all of his various treatments. I never had a problem with a dentist even though I was iffy on my brushing habits at best and it never scared me to go to my annual visits. I even got my wisdom teeth extracted under sedation with no issues or extra drama.
Flash forward to adulthood. After getting kicked off my parents' insurance (yay America), I didn't go to the dentist for four years because of COVID and being in between various insurances for work. Again I had a history of relative no teeth issues so I wasn't stressed about the lapse in dental checkups because nothing was hurting either. I tried to book an appointment with my family dentist in July 2024 but they weren't available until November 2024. My friend had a great experience with his dentist and I figured I just needed a cleaning so it wouldn't hurt to give them a try.
The friend's dentist told me I had a failed filling from ions ago that needed a crown treatment. They showed me the X-rays and I trusted dentists at that point so I agreed to the treatment with a quoted two week recovery plan. My only red flag with them was that they tried upselling me on an optional medicine not covered by insurance to prevent cavities on a specific molar but I opted out of that treatment.
The crown treatment ended up being an incredibly traumatic incident. My gums got incredibly irritated from the temporary crown cement and when I called them for help on it on Friday morning, they couldn't get me in until that next Tuesday morning and only told me to rinse with salt water. They didn't even advise Advil for the pain but I started dosing myself with it every 8 hours thanks to the internet's suggestions and it was the only way to tolerate the pain. When I went in for my treatment that Tuesday morning, they told me my crown was ready ahead of schedule and tried to place it. Unfortunately, the crown didn't fit, but that didn't stop them from continuing to try to place it for FOUR HOURS without numbing cream until it finally got stuck and the dentist had to drill it out and remold my tooth for a new permanent crown (that part did get some numbing cream after I begged them for it).
Throughout this entire process, I was being gaslit by the friend's dentist that my gum irritation was due to already weak gums or me taking poor care of them and my crown refused to fit because the teeth next to it were crooked/rotated (as if they weren't the dentists who could've seen that BEFORE the crown treatment).
I had to wait another two weeks for another permanent crown to be made. When the second permanent crown came in, it also didn't fit. When I asked them what they were going to do to make it fit the third time, they couldn't give me a straight answer and told me they would "just keep trying" as if their first two attempts didn't cause me unbearable pain when there was no pain before the procedure. They also refused to rush the delivery on the third one, which would've been another two weeks wait.
Finally embracing my inner Karen, I chewed them out for my poor treatment (with a half numb mouth, mind you), got a refund, and then got an emergency appointment with my family dentist who miraculously could fit me in first thing the next day to finish the procedure. After working with my family dentist, it turns out not only did the friend's dentist shape my tooth wrong for crown placement, but the extreme gum irritation I was crying about (and was told was occurring because I couldn't take care of my gums) was because the dentist had left cord under my gum line during crown prep. Once my family dentist cleared out the cord, the gums healed great. My family dentist also bumped me up to three Advil a day with an occasional Tylenol for the pain for my recovery while the friend's dentist never once recommended any sort of OTC pain meds.
My family dentist has been a godsend. They ended up placing my crown and finishing the treatment within three business days when the last dentist had taken over a month to not even fix what they broke. The family dentist has also helped me with other issues such as a painful cavity on another molar and a random anxiety freakout over more irritated gums, which now makes sense why I freaked out now that I wrote out my previous trauma with it.
But while I logically trust my family dentist, my experience with the friend's dentist has left me emotionally scarred and anxious for my visits with the family dentist. I'm finding it really difficult to trust any of their diagnosis after my poor experience with the friend's dentist. Every time I feel any sort of little pain in my teeth or mouth, I panic because I worry that my family dentist missed something in their last check (like what the friend's dentist did with the cord on my gum) and I don't want to end up in that chair again only to end up in more pain after treatment or keep calling them for every little thing to ask them "are you SURE you didn't miss anything?" Like during my last visit with the family dentist at the beginning of January 2025, they said my latest pain was because I likely cut my gums with excessive flossing (thank you overcompensating for my health anxiety) and the gums were extremely irritated against a tooth that already had some minor gum recession but would likely heal with salt water rinses and rubbing Sensodyne toothpaste directly on the affected tooth. But it's now the start of February 2025 and the pain is still ongoing. Better than before, but the recovery has been incredibly slow so now I'm worried it's something more that they missed during their check up just to get my anxious butt out of their chair.
Again, logically, I know these things just take time to heal from both emotionally and physically and there are people with way worse teeth and dental experiences than me. But I really want to return to my old confidence levels with the dentist and my dental health, especially since my family dentist has been so incredibly kind and competent with all of my recent dental issues and I really want to trust them. I was working with a talk therapist for a while, but thought I would try tackling these anxieties on my own for a bit to see how I handle it.
I also would really love to start trusting the dentist again so I can stop googling things because while Google was the only thing that saved me during my experience with the friend's dentist, it has only increased my anxiety since then and I'm constantly stressed about the state of my teeth.
(Btw the friend has already switched dentists after my experience and has apologized countless times for the referral even though he had no way of knowing how bad they would be after his positive experience)
So yeah. That's my long story of why I have dental anxiety now after a lifetime of not having it and it's really putting a damper on my life when I'm constantly nervous about tooth pain (especially if it's somehow triggered on the weekend when the dentist isn't available). I hope I can have a more optimistic addition to this journal soon about my recovery. I've already made a ton of strides from when I was stuck in bed unable to do much else than Google my symptoms and watch bad movies. I really do want to trust the dentist again and stop dreading calling them so any words of wisdom or advice would be appreciated
every little day is an improvement! I'm also so proud that I didn't cave and call my dentist back when my gums were still healing. They took ages to heal (much closer to the 8 week mark) but gosh it's so nice to not be in pain. 