I
injectionsdontworkonme
Junior member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2015
- Messages
- 4
Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening out
Hi everyone,
So apparently I'm in the minority of people for whom local anesthetic (the injections most people call Novocaine, but I don't think that's what's used anymore) doesn't work. Previous traumatic dental experience kept me away from the dentist for about a decade. Over the past couple of weeks I had an extraction for a tooth that wasn't in pain, but was severely broken. I researched on google beforehand how much it would hurt, and the wide consensus was that if I received an anesthetic injection, I would feel literally nothing except for the movement. But some pain after the procedure was over. When the dental office staff saw my anxiety they also assured me there would be no feeling at all.
I went in and received about 6 or so injections, and it was still painful. Extremely so. Not enough for me to scream or run out of the office, but enough that I was reassured as to why I was so afraid of the dentist. What was more terrifying is that there would be no pain, or very mild pain, and then sudden super sharp pain lasting anywhere from a split second to much longer, and the entire time I was stressing out waiting for something to slip or the fragment he's grabbing onto to break, and the pain to multiply. So even during the points where the pain was less or non-existent, I was still severely stressing out. So I survived that.
Next were the fillings, yesterday. Again, I went to google, to look up 'how painful are fillings compared to an extraction'. Again, nothing but testimonials about how I would feel nothing at all, certainly nothing compared to an extraction. I went to the dentist, got my mouth/gum injections, and I'm waiting. I cannot stress enough how literal I'm being here: I could actually see the lamp above my dental chair swaying a tiny bit each time I felt my heart beating in my chest before the dentist walked in. The assistant seeing my anxiety said 'aww. Don't be so nervous, these are just fillings' She wasn't being patronizing or condescending, but she could see I was in genuine terror. Again, there was pain, and again, the worst part was the constant anxiety of having little feeling, to slight manageable pain interspersed with super intense sharp sudden pain at certain random moments. Once he switched to some larger spinning head on the drill (or that's what it felt like), it was constant severe pain when he used it, and after that point even the water spray was sharp pain.
Now here's the worst part. I got out to the parking lot after the fillings, and just wanted to bask in how wonderful it was going to be that all that was left was a probably painless deep cleaning (scaling and root planing), so I go to Google again, just to make sure I wasn't mistaken. Now to my horror, instead of nothing but people saying 'totally painless', there was mixture of that, and quite a few saying things along the lines of 'worst pain I've ever felt in my life', 'I was literally crying', and 'excruciating'. Now going by the fact that I didn't read anything remotely like that for the other two procedures, and that most people seem to be affected by local anesthetic much more strongly than I am, I'm seriously considering calling in today to cancel my appointment tomorrow, and hopefully I can save up hundreds of dollars over the next year to pay for a dentist outside my insurance that will do this after putting me completely to sleep. I feel like I'm taking years off my life with this stress to save a few years for my teeth. I don't even know for sure if they're going to do the whole mouth tomorrow, or if there will be more weeks of terror in between.
Is there anyone here who actually still feels pain with anesthetic? And if so, how did the pain of an SRP compare to an extraction or a filling. To be clear, I think the pain is somewhat numbed by the anesthetic, but not nearly enough that if I had to get more fillings I'd go back. So for people who aren't completely numbed by this stuff, how do SRP's compare? Also, I've pretty much ruled out that the dentist just isn't doing it right. This is a lifelong thing, and I've been to many dentists around the country as I traveled in my youth, and dentists that get 5 star ratings from their customers. Each one reacts to my anxiety assuring me the previous dentist must not have injected me right, and it's always the same traumatic result. I'm just hoping that the 'excruciating' descriptions were from people who received no numbing at all. So any thoughts?
For background, as I said, aside from the recent extraction, filling, and debridement (which wasn't too bad at all), and an emergency extraction a few years back, I haven't been to the dentist in literally a decade. I've had gums bleed in the past while brushing from time to time, but not recently. I brush daily. I don't have any pain in my mouth unless I drink something cold, and after these fillings and extraction, the pain is extremely mild.
Hi everyone,
So apparently I'm in the minority of people for whom local anesthetic (the injections most people call Novocaine, but I don't think that's what's used anymore) doesn't work. Previous traumatic dental experience kept me away from the dentist for about a decade. Over the past couple of weeks I had an extraction for a tooth that wasn't in pain, but was severely broken. I researched on google beforehand how much it would hurt, and the wide consensus was that if I received an anesthetic injection, I would feel literally nothing except for the movement. But some pain after the procedure was over. When the dental office staff saw my anxiety they also assured me there would be no feeling at all.
I went in and received about 6 or so injections, and it was still painful. Extremely so. Not enough for me to scream or run out of the office, but enough that I was reassured as to why I was so afraid of the dentist. What was more terrifying is that there would be no pain, or very mild pain, and then sudden super sharp pain lasting anywhere from a split second to much longer, and the entire time I was stressing out waiting for something to slip or the fragment he's grabbing onto to break, and the pain to multiply. So even during the points where the pain was less or non-existent, I was still severely stressing out. So I survived that.
Next were the fillings, yesterday. Again, I went to google, to look up 'how painful are fillings compared to an extraction'. Again, nothing but testimonials about how I would feel nothing at all, certainly nothing compared to an extraction. I went to the dentist, got my mouth/gum injections, and I'm waiting. I cannot stress enough how literal I'm being here: I could actually see the lamp above my dental chair swaying a tiny bit each time I felt my heart beating in my chest before the dentist walked in. The assistant seeing my anxiety said 'aww. Don't be so nervous, these are just fillings' She wasn't being patronizing or condescending, but she could see I was in genuine terror. Again, there was pain, and again, the worst part was the constant anxiety of having little feeling, to slight manageable pain interspersed with super intense sharp sudden pain at certain random moments. Once he switched to some larger spinning head on the drill (or that's what it felt like), it was constant severe pain when he used it, and after that point even the water spray was sharp pain.
Now here's the worst part. I got out to the parking lot after the fillings, and just wanted to bask in how wonderful it was going to be that all that was left was a probably painless deep cleaning (scaling and root planing), so I go to Google again, just to make sure I wasn't mistaken. Now to my horror, instead of nothing but people saying 'totally painless', there was mixture of that, and quite a few saying things along the lines of 'worst pain I've ever felt in my life', 'I was literally crying', and 'excruciating'. Now going by the fact that I didn't read anything remotely like that for the other two procedures, and that most people seem to be affected by local anesthetic much more strongly than I am, I'm seriously considering calling in today to cancel my appointment tomorrow, and hopefully I can save up hundreds of dollars over the next year to pay for a dentist outside my insurance that will do this after putting me completely to sleep. I feel like I'm taking years off my life with this stress to save a few years for my teeth. I don't even know for sure if they're going to do the whole mouth tomorrow, or if there will be more weeks of terror in between.
Is there anyone here who actually still feels pain with anesthetic? And if so, how did the pain of an SRP compare to an extraction or a filling. To be clear, I think the pain is somewhat numbed by the anesthetic, but not nearly enough that if I had to get more fillings I'd go back. So for people who aren't completely numbed by this stuff, how do SRP's compare? Also, I've pretty much ruled out that the dentist just isn't doing it right. This is a lifelong thing, and I've been to many dentists around the country as I traveled in my youth, and dentists that get 5 star ratings from their customers. Each one reacts to my anxiety assuring me the previous dentist must not have injected me right, and it's always the same traumatic result. I'm just hoping that the 'excruciating' descriptions were from people who received no numbing at all. So any thoughts?
For background, as I said, aside from the recent extraction, filling, and debridement (which wasn't too bad at all), and an emergency extraction a few years back, I haven't been to the dentist in literally a decade. I've had gums bleed in the past while brushing from time to time, but not recently. I brush daily. I don't have any pain in my mouth unless I drink something cold, and after these fillings and extraction, the pain is extremely mild.
Last edited:
Leaving in about 20 minutes to face my doom. If I remember, I'll post back if I made it through or clocked out early.
