Yay Fillings.... And hell at the dentist...

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So, as I have posted in another thread, I am very very very morbidly deathly phobic of anything medical. And I had to get fillings... So my anxiety has been through the roof this morning. I get to the dentist, and they are telling me to close my eyes because they can see how afraid I am and are afraid I might make a sudden motion and hurt myself... My fear is so great that closing my eyes just makes it worse, so I couldn't do that. I manage to get myself settled down enough to let them give me the anesthetic and they start drilling... But I could still feel it. Shot 2... They start drilling again, and it hasn't gotten much better... Shot 3... They blow air on it to see if I am still sensitive, and I could feel that. But I let them try drilling again.. And I only sortof feel it this time... I am fighting the fear and the feeling of pain, and they finish up... Odd thing was my lip was very very very numb, as if all the anesthetic had gone to my lip instead of my teeth. I still can't feel my lip, and I hate the feeling of regaining sensation in my body, it is disgusting and one of those slightly bearable sensory things for me. The dentist did a very very good job with the filling, you can't even tell that my tooth had gotten a filling when I look in the mirror, and it was one of my teeth in the front... Unfortunately as a kid I never got into a habit of brushing, so this filling won't be the last... I have already had a couple others... I hate my AS when it comes to needing routine to get any little hygeine stuff done... I am struggling to try and get a good routine going for my teeth, but since the fillings I am trying harder.

Anyone else have an experience like this, or have any suggestions for getting a good routine going?

Dentists visits are highly motivating for brushing your teeth. What I hate most are the cleanings, so the better I clean my teeth, the less painful the cleaning is. I don't like toothpaste either, and avoided the frothy stuff for years, using baking soda, but with the soft water in Vancouver I really need the fluoride so I've had to go back to using toothpaste. I brush with paste and floss on my way to bed, and brush with just water whenever my teeth are feeling fuzzy during the day. As routines go, it seems to be working. No root canals since the first two! (Hint: when a filling falls out, don't wait a year until the tooth starts falling apart before finding a dentist.)

I was just at the dentist this Wednesday, and had two old fillings replaced in addition to the cleaning. Plus some x-rays. The lead-lined thing they put on you for the x-rays is so comfortable they should just offer it to us for all dentist visits (nice version of the weighted blanket). I'm also partial to dental dams and that block that you bite down on - they didn't have those when I was a kid, and they really take the edge off. Only now they have that water/sonar cleaner, but I can't handle all that water in my mouth, so I insist the hygeinist use the old picks with no water and minimal suction and that makes the cleaning much easier. And I don't get the polish.

I had the problem with anesthetic once myself; after that I just told myself to interpret the sensation differently ("it's just sensation") and that seems to help keep me from panicking.

Padium,
see if they offer-or can refer self to hospital to have that sort of stuff done under general anaesthetic,its really strange that they dont even offer IV sedation for someone with s/phobia and bad sensory problems? am thought most dentists did IVS at least.

The last time I went to the dentist, I totally flipped out when they told me I had to get fillings. It certainly didn't help that they wanted to yank out my wisdom teeth too. I was crying, begging them not to, etc. However, everything was okay once they gave me some nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Though I still didn't let them take out my wisdom teeth, lol. Anyway, I'm surprised they didn't give any laughing gas to you; maybe you should ask them for it next time you go.

I used to live in fear of the dentist and I went for about 8 years without going to the get my teeth fixed. I finally got the courage to go and get my teeth fixed and I found that a modern dentist is a lot more gentle than the monster my parents took me to see as a child.

My advice is to try to day dream in the dentists chair, I like to day dream about snogging a good looking young lady or a few things which are not printable here (by the way not sexual things).

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

earlier posts of mine contain dissertations on dental visits. i have partial synaestheiai so a drill at a certain pitch causes pain. i thrum and tap all through my dental visits. my dentist knows i have AS and are really cluey so they know the drill. (pun intended.) they tell me every stage of what they are doing.
i have more anaesthetic than anyone they have had in their surgery and i also have gas. i still thrum, tap and scream. last time i saw the male dentist michael, i whacked him because i felt the pain from THE SOUND of the drill. he is great with me. he is really nice about it. he jus talks about the latest Oliver Sacks book and is very kind about how difficult it is for me in the chair.

i also have really severe bruxism - (teeth grinding night stimming.) i have abnormal compensatory bone growth in my upper and lower palettes -i wear a friggin orthodontic mouth guard to bed to stop me killing my own teeth. it is pretty full on. i am a BIG stimmer and tic- er and it does not stop at night.

my dentists ar holistic ones and so they are up on ASD's and stimming and synaesthesia issues. i actually go to them because they know the score.


and in Australia you can get about 4,000 dollars worth of free dentistry using a private dentist, if you know the ins and outs of the system. very good and should be the case in all coutnries for those of us who struggle financially.

acsually im going to dentist at monday to get filling but i dont mind beter have it fixset before its hurting

I had to get a filling over spring break last year. I didn't really have any problem with the actual procedure since the anesthetic did its job. It was really weird after the fact because it almost felt like half of my jaw wasn't there. And then the feeling slowly began to come back...

I have no plans to see a dentist ever again *fingers crossed*

Most of them probably mean well, but the industry overall is a medical mafia that cynically exploits the fact that you cant look inside your own mouth. They promote toxic rubbish like fluoride, mercury, and now bispenol-A & push gelatin-based toothpastes - although gelatine isnt particulalry bad per se it leaves a persistant residual layer over your teeth which prevents them from being able to re-enamelize - repair- themselves. So toothpaste keeps you unnecessarily dependant on them with their expensive drills, fillings and other nonsense.

dr bronners organic liquid soap is apparntly safe to brush with, and far cheaper than the niche toothsoaps.

I'm terrified of dentists.

I went to one when I was a preteen who said I had cavities. If they were there, they were so tiny that they were causing me no discomfort whatsoever. He drilled away most of several of my teeth and filled them. He didn't do a good job filling them, so a bit of filling fell out and one tooth abcessed when I was a teenager.

My parents didn't want to pay for a root canal, so I went to another dentist to have the tooth pulled (after a course of antibiotics). He took x-rays, gave me anaesthetic and started pulling. I was yelling in pain and the tooth wouldn't budge. He gave me as much anaesthetic as he dared and I was still in a lot of pain. He finally broke the tooth into pieces and took it out.

He told me that it had turned out that my tooth had curved roots -- that's why he couldn't pull it out. Why didn't he see that it had curved roots on the x-rays?!

My teeth are in terrible shape, but I will never go back to a dentist again until I can no longer chew and need dentures. And then they'll have to put me under.

If you want to hear a horror story I once made the mistake of having a "small" filling done without any local anesthesia. I have no idea why I agreed to this. I suppose it was because I always get a bit squeamish when they stick the anesthesia needle into my gums and I thought it would go smoother and faster if they just skipped that step. It was a stupid idea nonetheless.

Surprisingly there was almost no pain with the drilling itself but the anticipation of feeling pain made me quite uncomfortable throughout. Then before placing the filling they blasted the hole they’d drilled with that little air hose thingy. Just when I least expected it I hit the ceiling. I yelled and lurched upright and my eyes got teary as I waited several seconds for the pain to subside. I don't have any idea why the air hurt so much worse than the drill. Never again!

I used to let a former dentist do small fillings without anaesthetic, once you get used to it, it's better than the needle and the numb lip and the anaesthetic hangover the next day. You shed a few tears, but it's fairly quick.

I used to have health cover for dental but I've let it go and I rely on the public dental system which is lousy. I just floss and brush as a preventative, but I'm from a genetically bad teeth family. I'm losing a lot of teeth due to age. The public dental system here is lousy, you are entitled to a checkup and treatment every 3 years, so basically like all public dental systems, they wait till they're so bad they just pull them out.