Binky
Junior member
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2013
- Messages
- 3
- Location
- Manchester, UK
I apologise in advance about the following epic post.
I suffer from extreme dentist phobia. Just thinking about dentists makes me feel physically sick to the point of vomiting, and inside a dentist's office, I usually cry hysterically, feel shaky and nautious, and if the unfortunate dentist comes near me I get so panicky, I lash out and push him away, which is pure fear-reaction.
My personal reasons for my phobia are complex- a combination of childhood experiences and other bad experiences. My mother thought it was a great idea to take her little kids into the dentist's office with her whenever she got treatment, cuz she thought we would lose all fear of dentists that way, but it worked totally the opposite way. Me and my sis must have seen our mother wince in pain and so we associate dentists with pain and both have massive phobias. Added to that, as a teenager I had a terrible dentist, and got lockjaw from tetanus (bloodpoisoning) after one particularly bad treatment. That must have been the last straw for me.
I have had 2 days from hell once again because I can not get any support in the UK for my dentist phobia.
You read in the papers all the time, how the NHS has become uncaring and there are so many horror stories of cold and harsh health professionals, and I am sorry to say, it's all true.
It all seemed to go downhill about 10 years ago, before that, I used to get excellent help with dental treatment. A friend recommended a kind and caring dentist to me, who specialised in nervous people. He was a lovely man, treated you with respect, and offered the following treatments for people like me, who are petrified of dental treatment: he would prescribe sleeping tablets for the night before an appointment, and Valium to take before coming to the surgery. Then he would offer you intravenous sedation (again, Valium) for the treatment. This would be enough sedation, so you would be totally knocked out for 30 minutes or less, so he could do the treatment, and you could walk out of the practice afterwards, woozy but able to walk, and go home.
Then one day, maybe about 10 years ago, he had to tell me that from then on, the NHS had forbidden individual NHS dentists to administer sedation, and ever since then, my whole dental treatment has been one disaster after another....
Now, whenever anything goes wrong with my teeth, I have to go to the dentist, who is supposed to refer nervous patients to a special Sedation Clinic for treatment. Of course there is a waiting list and no chance of immeditate treatment.
Only problem is, once you get there, they have clear messages posted on the walls, that they are legally only permitted to administer a certain amount of sedation. We have tried treatment under the new rules, but the sedation they give is so low, it doesn't work for me at all. I am still fully conscious, fully anxious and screaming with fear, and my husband said, I was making the other patients cry in the waiting room when they heard me...and treatment had to be broken off.
So these sedation clinics are NOT an option for me, and I have to be referred on to my local Dental Hospital. This entails a waiting list of many weeks, if not months, just for an initial consultation. They do sedation treatment there, but it is the same as at the regular sedation clinics, so they also can not treat me there. So I have to be referred to the main general hospital down the road, where I can have oral surgery, with an anaesthetic under medical supervision. And again, there can be several weeks or months waiting time before I finally get treatment.
So this has been going on for many years for me, and believe me, it is no picnic, when you are in pain, to wait months and months for treatment. And don't think i haven't tried other things. Me and the dentist have tried dosing me up to the gills with tranquilisers for treatment, but while monitoring my vitals, he had to break off the treatment, because I was getting so worked up with stress, he thought I might have a stroke, so to speak. So no, it really is impossible to treat me without the sedation. By these costcutting methods the NHS started a few years ago, they have taken away my safe and immediate treatment and have put me through hellish pain and delays many , many times.
It got to the point, where I said, I can't deal with this anymore, waiting for 6 months for different referrals every time I need dental treatment, I need drastic measures taken, and I asked for all my remaining teeth to be removed and requested dentures. That's when I found out that apparently, this is another NHS cost cutting measure, that they don't give people dentures anymore, like they used to do in the olden days....we all know people, who in the "good old days" of the NHS, used to ask for dentures by the age of 30 and get them, for various reasons. But no, not for me. For the past 2 years I have begged and pleaded with various dentists at the dental hospital for dentures, on the grounds of my dentist phobia and how stressful and painful it is for me to get treatment. They have now finally agreed, after many consultations, on the grounds I now have advanced gum disease (as I have not had my teeth polished and cleaned by a dentist since they outlawed sedation) and have lost several teeth which have simply fallen out after much pain and suffering.
I am now on the usual waiting list for treatment at the main general hospital, but added to that, they have now decided to make me have a consultation with an anaethesiologist first, instead of going straight on to the treatment (oral surgery). They just can' seem to get it into their heads that I am in pain and every day waiting for appointment is agonising. And NEVER have I met a more hardnosed, unsympathetic bunch of so-called health care professionals in my life....the way they have treated me and talked to me at that dental hospital, like I am the scum of the earth. Even my husband has been astonished at how they have spoken to me and treated me there. When you are already feeling down because of pain and fear, that is not how you want to be treated.
Whatever happened to the NHS? Are we really just units of cost to them now, and not human beings anymore????
I suffer from extreme dentist phobia. Just thinking about dentists makes me feel physically sick to the point of vomiting, and inside a dentist's office, I usually cry hysterically, feel shaky and nautious, and if the unfortunate dentist comes near me I get so panicky, I lash out and push him away, which is pure fear-reaction.
My personal reasons for my phobia are complex- a combination of childhood experiences and other bad experiences. My mother thought it was a great idea to take her little kids into the dentist's office with her whenever she got treatment, cuz she thought we would lose all fear of dentists that way, but it worked totally the opposite way. Me and my sis must have seen our mother wince in pain and so we associate dentists with pain and both have massive phobias. Added to that, as a teenager I had a terrible dentist, and got lockjaw from tetanus (bloodpoisoning) after one particularly bad treatment. That must have been the last straw for me.
I have had 2 days from hell once again because I can not get any support in the UK for my dentist phobia.
You read in the papers all the time, how the NHS has become uncaring and there are so many horror stories of cold and harsh health professionals, and I am sorry to say, it's all true.
It all seemed to go downhill about 10 years ago, before that, I used to get excellent help with dental treatment. A friend recommended a kind and caring dentist to me, who specialised in nervous people. He was a lovely man, treated you with respect, and offered the following treatments for people like me, who are petrified of dental treatment: he would prescribe sleeping tablets for the night before an appointment, and Valium to take before coming to the surgery. Then he would offer you intravenous sedation (again, Valium) for the treatment. This would be enough sedation, so you would be totally knocked out for 30 minutes or less, so he could do the treatment, and you could walk out of the practice afterwards, woozy but able to walk, and go home.
Then one day, maybe about 10 years ago, he had to tell me that from then on, the NHS had forbidden individual NHS dentists to administer sedation, and ever since then, my whole dental treatment has been one disaster after another....
Now, whenever anything goes wrong with my teeth, I have to go to the dentist, who is supposed to refer nervous patients to a special Sedation Clinic for treatment. Of course there is a waiting list and no chance of immeditate treatment.
Only problem is, once you get there, they have clear messages posted on the walls, that they are legally only permitted to administer a certain amount of sedation. We have tried treatment under the new rules, but the sedation they give is so low, it doesn't work for me at all. I am still fully conscious, fully anxious and screaming with fear, and my husband said, I was making the other patients cry in the waiting room when they heard me...and treatment had to be broken off.
So these sedation clinics are NOT an option for me, and I have to be referred on to my local Dental Hospital. This entails a waiting list of many weeks, if not months, just for an initial consultation. They do sedation treatment there, but it is the same as at the regular sedation clinics, so they also can not treat me there. So I have to be referred to the main general hospital down the road, where I can have oral surgery, with an anaesthetic under medical supervision. And again, there can be several weeks or months waiting time before I finally get treatment.
So this has been going on for many years for me, and believe me, it is no picnic, when you are in pain, to wait months and months for treatment. And don't think i haven't tried other things. Me and the dentist have tried dosing me up to the gills with tranquilisers for treatment, but while monitoring my vitals, he had to break off the treatment, because I was getting so worked up with stress, he thought I might have a stroke, so to speak. So no, it really is impossible to treat me without the sedation. By these costcutting methods the NHS started a few years ago, they have taken away my safe and immediate treatment and have put me through hellish pain and delays many , many times.
It got to the point, where I said, I can't deal with this anymore, waiting for 6 months for different referrals every time I need dental treatment, I need drastic measures taken, and I asked for all my remaining teeth to be removed and requested dentures. That's when I found out that apparently, this is another NHS cost cutting measure, that they don't give people dentures anymore, like they used to do in the olden days....we all know people, who in the "good old days" of the NHS, used to ask for dentures by the age of 30 and get them, for various reasons. But no, not for me. For the past 2 years I have begged and pleaded with various dentists at the dental hospital for dentures, on the grounds of my dentist phobia and how stressful and painful it is for me to get treatment. They have now finally agreed, after many consultations, on the grounds I now have advanced gum disease (as I have not had my teeth polished and cleaned by a dentist since they outlawed sedation) and have lost several teeth which have simply fallen out after much pain and suffering.
I am now on the usual waiting list for treatment at the main general hospital, but added to that, they have now decided to make me have a consultation with an anaethesiologist first, instead of going straight on to the treatment (oral surgery). They just can' seem to get it into their heads that I am in pain and every day waiting for appointment is agonising. And NEVER have I met a more hardnosed, unsympathetic bunch of so-called health care professionals in my life....the way they have treated me and talked to me at that dental hospital, like I am the scum of the earth. Even my husband has been astonished at how they have spoken to me and treated me there. When you are already feeling down because of pain and fear, that is not how you want to be treated.
Whatever happened to the NHS? Are we really just units of cost to them now, and not human beings anymore????