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Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening out

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injectionsdontworkonme

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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.
 
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Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

Thanks for the support and advice everyone.:( 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.
 
Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

Is there anyone here who actually still feels pain with anesthetic?

Hi! Yep, that's me!

First of all welcome to the forum. You are not alone - I hear you and I totally get what you're going through :XXLhug:


I'm afraid I can't help you re the deep cleaning, as that's not something I've ever had done, but there are a few other thoughts I have reading your post:


First off, STEP AWAY FROM GOOGLE!! Seriously, I know it's tempting in a "can't look away" sort of a way, but as you'll have seen you are going to find a lot of mixed signals, and people telling stories that will be very polarised. It'll only drive you crazy and leave you further confused.

The reality of it is, from reading this forum for a few years and seeing people's stories, that people's experiences of pain differ and are very individual, especially when it comes to dentistry. What is nothing to one person will be just about tolerable to another and unbearable to yet another. That's why one person "managing just fine" without anaesthetic doesn't for a second mean that you can or should. What matters here is your needs and your experiences.


On to the stuff with the anaesthetic.

OK, I can relate. For many, many years now I've had problems with persistent local anaesthetic failure in a few of my teeth (for me, it's the bottom left corner). The reason in my case sounds different to yours - the drugs work just fine on me, but it seems I have an unusual arrangement of nerves in that corner of my mouth - but the end result is the same…years and years of surprised/confused/baffled dentists and (barely) tolerating work on teeth that were not numb. This is why I know that your experiences are real.

What I would like to say to you is don't give up. Don't assume that you are doomed to always have the work done without effective anaesthetic. I used to believe that too - after 15 years of horrible experiences and at least 4 or 5 different dentists trying and failing to get those teeth numb, I went to a new dentist in search of sedation. Like you, I really thought it couldn't be done and just wanted to be 'out of it' so that I didn't have to endure it any more. But the new dentist had other ideas - he tried different ways over a couple of attempts, stuff that nobody had ever tried on me before, and eventually found the injection technique that worked for me. I had a filling, for the first time ever, on a bottom left tooth that was completely numb - and it was totally painless. Totally.

So the take home message here is that it is possible. You don't have to endure the treatments without anaesthetic. I'm not just saying that in the way that your dentists may have - that "don't be silly, of course it will work" way…I'm saying it based on many years of having the same sort of experiences.

What you need is a dentist who is prepared to keep trying until they find what works for you. There are many different types of local anaesthetic drugs that work in different ways, and you need somebody who will keep trying stuff until they find the answer - those dentist do exist, I've met one. It was like finding a unicorn! He told me that once he took 8 attempts (eight!!) at getting a guy's teeth numb before it finally worked. I've found that a good sign is if they believe you when you tell them about your past experiences rather than just dismissing them or trying to minimise them.

The reason many (dare I say "most" - in my experience at least!) dentists are flummoxed by this sort of problem or prone to dismissing it is because the vast majority of the time, when the local anaesthetic doesn't quite work, all they need to do is put some more in and it solves the problem. It's really unusual for that to not work and that can throw them. That's why it's so important to be believed.


Sorry, I've been rambling a bit and I know this probably wasn't the kind of answer you are looking for and doesn't actually address the problem of your cleaning!

Don't give up though. Hang in there. I totally get it :XXLhug:
 
Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

Thanks for the support and advice everyone.:( 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.

Wait, I just saw this! You must have posted as I was typing my response!

Please do post back and let us know how you got on! Rooting for you today!



…gosh, I hope you saw my response before you left :( You are not alone, I promise!
 
Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

In the parking lot a little early and decided to check the forum one last time. Have to go in right now though. Thanks a lot Tink. You actually did make me feel a bit more hopeful. Wish me luck. Will report back later
 
Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

Good luck! :clover:
 
Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

Thanks again Tink.
Wow. What a relief. They only used gel for numbing, and there was barely any discomfort and even that actually felt good in a way. Kinda like the same nice, very very mild pain you get during a regular cleaning when they're working around your gums. Now my teeth feel ultra clean and I can move on with my life and not think about the dentist for another 3 months. Also I had read online this would take a half hour to 45 minutes per quadrant. It only took an hour for my entire mouth. Hooray, I'm free:) :jump:
 
Re: Terrified of an upcoming SRP, thinking of spending hundreds more on sedation, or just chickening

Hooray! So glad to hear it went well :jump: Well done for going too, I know how hard it is when you think you're facing unavoidable pain.

Now go and do something nice for yourself :)

All the best, and I hope that in the future you find your unicorn with the answer to your anaesthetic problems.
 

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