Dental Anxiety

I made it through another dentist appointment. I have had a lot lately. I have crappy teeth. Today they finished up the root canal that was started 2 weeks ago. The tooth has been filled now and eventually I will need a crown. But for now it is good to go.

I don't usually have problems with anxiety when it comes to the dentist. Unless you count the anxiety that comes with paying the bill! LOL But the last couple of things I have had done have required a lot of Novocaine to thoroughly numb me up to do the work that I needed. The only pain I feel is those stupid needles and a mild soreness in my jaw when all is said and done.

The hard part for me has been the numbness. This would be why I used to have my fillings done with out Novocaine. My tongue and pretty much the entire side of my mouth goes numb. Which is good of course. But I start to have problems with swallowing. I can swallow but it feels like I can't move my tongue, lips and cheek. Sometimes it feels like my tongue falls back and I can't pull it forward to either swallow or to breath. I know logically that I am fine. But I start to panic. The longer it takes for me to move my tongue the more I panic. Then of course it takes me a bit to get myself settled back down.

Anxiety is hard enough to deal with in private. But it is insane when you have two people hovering over you with their fingers in your mouth. Part of me wants to sit up and hyperventilate a bit. But most of me just wants to hang on and get through it. Because if I ask them to stop I have two problems. First of all I have to try and explain to them that I am not in pain but am instead having a panic attack. And second it would just make things take that much longer to finish up so I can get out of there.

So I did my best to suck it up and get through. I focused on the writing on the center piece of the light above me. I did my deep breathing. Which was difficult at one point when the rubber thingy got pushed to high and covered my nose just has I was breathing in. I repeated to myself over and over again in my head that I was fine. I could breath. I could swallow. I just needed to stay calm. My jaw did not hurt from going ahhhhhhhhhhhh for what felt like forever. (Yeah right! It was totally killing me!) It only took an hour to do the work. My dentist admitted that it was more difficult than he had thought it would be. (It is difficult to push away the panic when you can see your dentist shaking his head as he works.) But I got through it.

I am home now. The baby is sleeping. The numbness has worn off. I think I can finally have some lunch. WOOT WOOT! I am starving. And I am happy to be able to say I conquered yet another anxiety threat and avoided a full on panic attack. I still struggle from time to time but I have the tools and I am getting better. And I have been able to do it with out medication which means a lot to me. I am happy for that.