confronting twenty plus years of dental anxiety
When I was in high school, my parents lost our health insurance. Since my parents both have chronic illnesses, they needed to prioritize paying for their health needs over ours since we were three relatively healthy teens. I don't fault them for the choices they had to make, but it did leave me with a ton of medical anxiety - often putting off my pain until it got unavoidable.
Although I have been working with my primary health provider and mental health care team for several years now, I was still terrified of going to the dentist. It didn't help that my ex treated my anxiety about going to the dentist as unreasonable. I've been self-conscious about my teeth for most of my life since I lost my baby teeth very slowly leading to crowding in the bottom row and significant gaps between my teeth.
Last week, I started feeling pain around one of my molars. I waited a couple days, but it started to spread outward, including to my jaw and inner ear. Despite how scared I am about scheduling appointments, especially with new clinics, I scheduled an emergency consultation. It turns out that it was the right call too: my molar was infected and needed a deep cleaning alongside a course of antibiotics.
What surprised me though, was that I didn't even have cavities or cracks in that quadrant of my mouth. Aside from all the build up, my teeth were in pretty good shape. Plus, my dentist used equipment that we didn't have back when I was a teenager that helped with my sensory issues tremendously.
Going to the dentist wasn't fun, and my jaw feels like someone punched me from the injection site, but now I'm not as scared to go back to have the rest of my mouth examined and cleaned. I'll just do them one quadrant at a time until I'm in better shape.
I hope this helps anyone else who has dealt with similar fears and might feel embarrassed by them. If you can afford a consultation, and find a clinic that runs as smoothly and compassionately as mine did, then it is definitely worth going for health and peace of mind.