Welcome to my dental hell

My very first post. I'm going to give you a little background on my teeth, my phobia, my fears and my hopes. Let's start 12 years ago. I'd just turned 40, and my teeth were in pretty good shape, I had some fillings that were kind of old but nothing dire. I hadn't seen a dentist in about 5 years, and decided it was time. I made an appointment at a clinic not too far from my office. No fears, no worries. I arrived, waited 20 minutes (waiting times at dentists' offices is something I'll address in the future), finally got seated in a chair. A dental hygenist started cleaning my teeth. She used sharp pointed instruments, was extremely rough, laughed when I complained, and was just plain nasty.

"What I didn't know, because no one told me, was that this was no ordinary cleaning. This was what they call "scaling and planing", a procedure that should not be done without numbing the area being cleaned because, HELLO, IT'S PAINFUL. It's bloody (for me, anyway), it's ugly, it hurts. Don't you just love it when medical personnel say things like "this might be a little uncomfortable"? That means THIS IS GOING TO HURT LIKE HELL.

So anyway, she got a fourth of my mouth done, I was swollen, crying, angry and upset. But I was also clueless, so I agreed to come back for another torture session the next day. I did return, but my gums were still so swollen that she recommended that I not have more treatment until they'd healed, and I went home and never went back.

Fast forward to five years later. I still didn't have any pain, but my teeth were looking yellow and I knew I needed to go for a cleaning and checkup. So I found a dentist - I'll call him Dr. R -- near my house. He turned out to be rather elderly -- 65 or older -- and had a dingy little office. I was a little worried, but climbed up in the chair. He poked around, told me I needed a thorough scaling and planing, and he didn't have the equipment to do that. I would need to go somewhere else for that. He also said I needed a root canal on a lower tooth. He couldn't do that either, but he could prep the tooth and get it ready for the root canal.

The thing about the dentist office is that you, the client, have no idea if what you're being told is accurate or not. You just trust the guy with the sharp instruments. And so I did. He started drilling and drilling, and suddenly he became panicky. He told his assistant my teeth were "like sand". The tooth he was working on was crumbling. I started panicking too. At one point, he muttered, "if only I could stop this bleeding". Finally he just shoved some kind of temporary crown over the tooth, told me to make an appointment for a root canal and then come back and he would put a permanent crown over it. The cleaning could wait. He shoved a bottle of Vicodin at me and hurried me out the door.

I left, my mouth throbbing and blood still trickling out. I made an appointment for a root canal, with Dr. P. By now, I was pretty fearful. When I talked to Dr. P's office, I told them I was terrified. The nurse promised me they would give me something to calm me down. True to their word, they gave me a Valium at the beginning of the appointment. I managed to get through the appointment with a minimum of discomfort, and really, the root canal was not all that bad. It only took about an hour, the Valium was nice, Dr. P. was pleasant.

No way was I going back to Dr. R for the crown, so I found another clinic near my office. Made the appointment, got the crown (two visits). I still hadn't had a cleaning or a thorough checkup. After about six months I got my courage up and started asking officemates for recommendations. A woman I trusted gave me the name of Dr. F. I called him, made an appointment, and hoped.

Dr. F. was a friendly guy in his early 50s. He took x-rays, poked around, and said that he couldn't do the cleaning I needed. I would need to be outsourced for that. Oh, and I needed another root canal, and oh, it looks like this tooth is cracked. Oh, and this one is going to have to be extracted. He gave me the name of a dentist downtown -- Dr. J -- ("a good friend of mine" -- in case you don't speak dentist-ese, that means "I get a referral fee for patients I send to him"). I went downtown to see Dr. J.

Dr. J had a huge office with an enormous water feature in the waiting room. The sign on the door identified him as a dental surgeon. I was pretty sure this was a bad sign, I knew he was going to want to do surgery! duh!! but like a good girl I climbed up in the chair and let him poke around. He made copious notes and then I left the office, without his telling me anything. He said he would work up a treatment program and mail it to me.

Three days later I got the treatment plan in the mail. It included extensive surgery, including gum surgery, bone grafts and god knows what all. Total cost? $18,000. I threw it in a drawer and never went back.

As you can imagine, by this time my dental phobia was in full swing. But I went back to Dr. F, because he wanted me to report to him on what Dr. J had said. I did tell him. I didn't tell him I wasn't planning to go through with any of that. In the meantime, Dr. F. told me I needed a root canal on an upper right tooth right away. Turns out Dr. P, the root canal guy I'd already been to once, was a "good friend of his". So I made another appointment and had another root canal with Dr. P. Went back to Dr. F for the crown, which took two more appointments. During the second appointment, as he was fitting the crown, there was terrible pain. I squirmed and tried to complain, but he ignored me. After an inordinate amount of time, Dr F said something like "That's the best I can do" and I left his office. Three hours later I had the worst cold I'd ever had in my life. I don't normally get colds at all. My theory is that someone in the office was spreading a cold virus, and me, with my tooth splayed open, was a virtual honeypot for germs, bacteria and viruses. I was down for a week with that cold.

Dr. F's office kept calling me to make another appointment, as there was still work to be done. I put them off and put them off.

Two months later, I came down with shingles in the third cranial nerve , or at least, that's what my doctor thinks it was. My entire right eye was swollen shut and black and blue. Ugly red zits started popping up in a surprisingly linear pattern along my nose.

The doctor who examined me had no idea what it was. She called in 3 other doctors, who all came in and stared at my eye and nose as if they'd never seen anything so bizarre. One of them, at one point, said, "Well, I don't THINK it's leprosy." I was prescribed huge pills -- two sets of them, one anti-viral and the other an antibiotic. The doctor gave me both because she didn't know for sure what was wrong with me, and she was worried I would lose the eyesight in my right eye if she didn't act immediately.

I didn't lose my eyesight. Eventually the zits went away but they left pockmarks that I still have on my nose.

I went back to Dr. F one more time -- for an extraction of a lower left tooth. During that appointment I told him both about the cold and the shingles. He laughed in my face at the idea that dental work could have possibly caused either of them.

That was five years ago.

About a year ago, the teeth in the -- surprise! -- upper right quandrant began shifting. I woke up with blood in my mouth many times, and the teeth themselves drifted in various directions. That part of my mouth is now constantly painful and a couple of the teeth are loose. I worry that they can't be saved. But I still wouldn't go to the dentist anymore.

Finally last week I went on the internet and started reading about dental phobias. Most dental phobia sites are operated by dentists who promise "pain free" dentistry or "gentle dental". Ha. After my experiences I don't listen to those people anymore. But there are a couple of sites that have good information, offered by people just like me, fearful people. Dental Fear Central has a forum where you can post anything you like. I expect I'll be visiting them again. It's nice to read that you aren't the only one.