Dentists Scare Me

posted on august 29, 2002, tag: me

Ever since I was a child, I've always hated the dentist. I thought I had gotten past that, until this morning when I sat on an uncomfortable chair, leaned back and opened my mouth.

There's an inherent fear of the dentist in me. Frankly, I think it's in everyone. Nearly every person I spoke to about my tooth problem had the same reaction when I told them I was going to visit a DDS. Most people say, "I don't want to hear it," or, "Oh, God... I hate the dentist." Also common is a gasping reaction when talking about sharp tools or drills.

This morning the dentist told me that he'd need to crown my tooth, a process which involves removing all of the root canal stuff, putting a metal post into one of the canals, and then attaching a crown made of gold (inside) and porcelain (outside). Luckily, he'll be able to match it to the rest of my yellow-ish teeth. I wouldn't want a clean-looking tooth standing out like that, in the back of my mouth.

So I made another appointment, in the beginning of September, to start the process. In the meantime, he put some silly-putty-looking stuff in the area missing (from the tooth breaking) and although it's not as smooth as real teeth, at least it feels like I have a full tooth there.

The only pain from the day was when the dentist, extremely excited to prove to me that the rest of my tooth wasn't that fragile, put all this weight on the damn thing and tried to break it. Yeah, sure, he proved it—but it was quite uncomfortable. Also, he had to remove "junk" that had gotten into the broken tooth, which wasn't all that comfortable either.

I can't wait for this whole thing to be over. I've had problems with this tooth going about five years now. In a few weeks, I'll never have to worry about it again. Thankfully, because I was considering just smashing out all of my teeth and getting dentures.