Fearteeth (part 1)

I've been terrified of dentists since I was a child. I didn't even know how badly I was terrified until I started hyperventilating while writing a letter asking friends for recommendations. I've been putting it off for twenty years, with excuses like "it's not that bad," or "I can't afford it now," or "where could I take a half-day off of work?" Even when my teeth started turning black, even after the second tooth cracked and left a fragment in my chewing gum.

I know when I ran out of excuses: April 2006 I don't know why I finally stopped putting it off in August 2006, but I did. I wrote the aforementioned letter, and had a panic attack before I could sign my name on it. So I called my mother and asked "did a dentist... /do/ anything to me as a kid? Some kind of abuse that I would block out? Because I'm acting like a traumatized patient here."

"Oh sweetie... no, no, but you do have good reasons," and she went on to explain things that I barely remember. Like the first dentist, who never believed that his patients feel pain (the clawmarks on my father's palms said otherwise). Or the second dentist, who chastised me for needing "six times what an adult uses" in novacaine, and showed off the needle when I told him I'm scared of such things. He also tried to give me unnecessary fillings: thankfully, his hygenist backed me up when I told him he was reading the X-rays wrong.

My mother went on to explain something that did affect me, but I don't remember: bad dentistry broke up my family. She experienced a neck and jaw injury that needed dental work, but the first dentists she went to made things even worse. For years she was paralyzed with pain, unable to work, depressed and unavailable emotionally or even socially. My parents were already estranged, and this was a major contributor to their divorce, and it took a long time for my mother and I to reconnect once her teeth and jaw were fixed by a proper dentist.

So, when the black teeth made me scared to pull my lower lip down, or even give a full smile, a dentist was something I was "supposed to do," but I never really considered it, and I thought about how people survived without dentists... my life wasn't in immediate danger, so I don't need to go. I cracked a tooth on a nutshell, but no nerves were exposed, so I'll just let it go with more careful toothbrushing. A second tooth cracked a year later, while I was chewing gum, and I nearly flipped out psychotic-style on the bus... but I devised a rational explanation as for why this was a sign that I would have no more tooth problems, and I ignored it. (The tooth fragment, embedded in chewing gum, made me so phobic that I had to dispose of it outside my own home.)

When I thought of the inevitable (or can I avoid it?) dentist visit, I had visions of blood streaming down my chin, of whole teeth shattering or disintegrating under the inspection pick, of a man with thick black rubber gloves with two-handed pliers and a knee on my chest pulling out a wisdom tooth (only to say "one down, three to go..."), and hours-long spelunking excursions known as "root canals" that would leave my jawbone as hollow as a bird's bone and shattering the next time I trip and fall.

The fear was so overwhelming, I never told anyone about the black teeth and I even lied to my family, lovers and girlfriend about the cracked teeth. My girlfriend told me that one of my most admirable qualities is my honesty. Three weeks ago I shamefully admitted to her that I lied about my teeth. I risked the trust between me and my girlfriend (third longest relationship ever, soon to be second-longest), just because of my fear of dentistry.

I have no idea how I overcame all of this and ended up in a dentist's waiting room two weeks ago.

( ...part 2 forthcoming... )