Everyone has had that dream.
The one where you're going about your business and all of the sudden, your tooth is cracking out of your mouth. So you put your hands out to touch it and with a naked crunch, the others start to come out too.
Embarrassed, horrified and scared, you cup them preciously in your hand, desperately seeking help or trying to put them back in.
If you tell me you've never had this dream before you're full of baloney because it's one of the top 5 dreams that humans share. PROOF
So anyway, surely you can empathize with how it felt when I was happily chomping away on some Pork-and-Macaroni bake when I heard a crack like a joint snapping underwater.
I froze.
I've never heard that sound before.
What was that sound?
Dad is carrying on in normal dinner conversation manner and my heart speeds up.
I use my tongue to fish around in my mouth, pushing the food around and searching for a hard piece.
I found it, and used my fingers to fish it out and inspect it.
Dad and his girlfriend notice me in my display of bad manners.
"What's the matter?"
I squint at the tiny, white fragment perched on the top of my fingertip, bringing it closer to the light.
Oh shit, I think, realizing that nothing in the Pork-and-Macaroni bake is porcelain-colored white.
"I think I broke my tooth," I tell them and someone gasps.
I set my tongue to work again, running along my bottom, top teeth until it snags on a razor sharp broken tooth edge that was never there before.
"Oh my god!" I said, my hand instinctively rising to hold my jawline.
"Do you have dental insurance?" Dad's girlfriend asks.
I have an unnatural fear of the dentist.
"Yes," I say. "But I've never used it."
My fear of the dentist is not the normal apprehensiveness that most people experience when they sit in the dentist's chair.
Mine is a full-blown phobia.
And with good reason.
Any mention of the word dentist zaps my mouth dry, sets my heart thumping and flushes me with a hot terror and immediately my mind revisits a memory that still gives me nightmares.
It's a shame too because one bad experience traumatized me.
As a kid, I was fine with the dentist.
He'd let me pick a toy from a treasure chest and I'd always be disappointed that it wasn't a lollipop like the bank tellers gave us.
That all changed when I was in high school.
I think it's because when I was little, my parents were very careful about what we ate. My sisters and I were never allowed to have soda and while every other kid would have fruit roll-ups in their bags for lunch, we'd have natural-sugarless fruit rolls that would coat your mouth and dissolve like jam.
So I guess once I was old enough to buy my own candy and soda, I kind of went crazy with hedonistic glee, guzzling down Dr. Peppers and popping Sour Patch Kids like an addict.
I was surprised as hell when I went for my yearly checkup and had cavities all over the place.
One was in a molar on the left side.
I had made an appointment to get it filled. My mom and sisters were in the waiting room and I was in the chair.
I've never had any kind of problem with needles, or fear of the dentist up until then, so the dental assistant numbed the area with banana flavored goop, then pushed in a needle and everything was fine.
The dentist came in a short while later, prepped me, then the drill whined up with a hiss and as soon as it connected with my tooth, it absolutely EXPLODED with an immediate and powerful pain not like anything I'd ever experienced before.
The sensation was so shocking that my body reacted on its own, flinching away from the drill with wild, animal-like movements and exclamations.
Everybody was all surprised as hell and confused so he stopped drilling, pulled off his mask and looked concerned at me as I crouched in the chair, wounded and just as confused.
I think when I flinched, the drill went deeper and my tooth was an angry throbbing pain that I clutched with my hand.
They put the instruments aside, looked inside my mouth, gave me another needle, and left the room for a while.
A pretty assistant gave me a CD player with soothing music on it and placed headphones gently over my ears.
She pushed me back into the seat and told me to relax.
I tried to relax. I felt my jaw get all numb.
The dentist came back a while later.
"Let's try this again," he says.
I flinched when he rapped on the tooth with a metal instrument.
"Did you feel that?" he asked me.
I felt it, but I wasn't sure if that's how it was supposed to feel. My jaw felt numby. I as nervous because everyone was staring at me expectantly and so I panicked.
"Um," I stammered, "not really."
"Should be numb by now," he said confidently, glancing at the clock.
He went for the drill. Once again, it whirred up with a hiss and he approached me as I pressed my body as far back into the seat as I could get.
I braced myself for the impact and once again, EXPLODING, otherworldly pain rocked through me as I writhed away from the drill.
The frustrated dentist, "I can't work when she's moving like this," and dropped the drill in a tray, leaving me with the assistants. This time, my screams must have alerted my mother because she flung open the door to the room just as the dentist was leaving.
I was crying and I got up and ran out into the waiting room.
My tooth had holes in it, but there was no way I was letting anyone near me with a dental drill after all that.
Mom brought me home and after that I started to have nightmares.
 |
| AAAAAAAHHHHHH! This dream totally SUCKS! |
Embarrassed, horrified and scared, you cup them preciously in your hand, desperately seeking help or trying to put them back in.
If you tell me you've never had this dream before you're full of baloney because it's one of the top 5 dreams that humans share. PROOF
So anyway, surely you can empathize with how it felt when I was happily chomping away on some Pork-and-Macaroni bake when I heard a crack like a joint snapping underwater.
I froze.
I've never heard that sound before.
What was that sound?
Dad is carrying on in normal dinner conversation manner and my heart speeds up.
I use my tongue to fish around in my mouth, pushing the food around and searching for a hard piece.
I found it, and used my fingers to fish it out and inspect it.
 |
| To me, they all look like this. |
"What's the matter?"
I squint at the tiny, white fragment perched on the top of my fingertip, bringing it closer to the light.
Oh shit, I think, realizing that nothing in the Pork-and-Macaroni bake is porcelain-colored white.
"I think I broke my tooth," I tell them and someone gasps.
I set my tongue to work again, running along my bottom, top teeth until it snags on a razor sharp broken tooth edge that was never there before.
"Oh my god!" I said, my hand instinctively rising to hold my jawline.
"Do you have dental insurance?" Dad's girlfriend asks.
 |
| I'd rather hug this guy than enter a dentist's office. |
"Yes," I say. "But I've never used it."
My fear of the dentist is not the normal apprehensiveness that most people experience when they sit in the dentist's chair.
Mine is a full-blown phobia.
And with good reason.
Any mention of the word dentist zaps my mouth dry, sets my heart thumping and flushes me with a hot terror and immediately my mind revisits a memory that still gives me nightmares.
It's a shame too because one bad experience traumatized me.
As a kid, I was fine with the dentist.
He'd let me pick a toy from a treasure chest and I'd always be disappointed that it wasn't a lollipop like the bank tellers gave us.
That all changed when I was in high school.
I think it's because when I was little, my parents were very careful about what we ate. My sisters and I were never allowed to have soda and while every other kid would have fruit roll-ups in their bags for lunch, we'd have natural-sugarless fruit rolls that would coat your mouth and dissolve like jam.
 |
| "You don't need soda. There's milk," our parents would say. |
So I guess once I was old enough to buy my own candy and soda, I kind of went crazy with hedonistic glee, guzzling down Dr. Peppers and popping Sour Patch Kids like an addict.
I was surprised as hell when I went for my yearly checkup and had cavities all over the place.
One was in a molar on the left side.
I had made an appointment to get it filled. My mom and sisters were in the waiting room and I was in the chair.
I've never had any kind of problem with needles, or fear of the dentist up until then, so the dental assistant numbed the area with banana flavored goop, then pushed in a needle and everything was fine.
The dentist came in a short while later, prepped me, then the drill whined up with a hiss and as soon as it connected with my tooth, it absolutely EXPLODED with an immediate and powerful pain not like anything I'd ever experienced before.
The sensation was so shocking that my body reacted on its own, flinching away from the drill with wild, animal-like movements and exclamations.
Everybody was all surprised as hell and confused so he stopped drilling, pulled off his mask and looked concerned at me as I crouched in the chair, wounded and just as confused.
I think when I flinched, the drill went deeper and my tooth was an angry throbbing pain that I clutched with my hand.
 |
| The cold, metal tools of the devil. |
A pretty assistant gave me a CD player with soothing music on it and placed headphones gently over my ears.
She pushed me back into the seat and told me to relax.
I tried to relax. I felt my jaw get all numb.
The dentist came back a while later.
"Let's try this again," he says.
I flinched when he rapped on the tooth with a metal instrument.
"Did you feel that?" he asked me.
I felt it, but I wasn't sure if that's how it was supposed to feel. My jaw felt numby. I as nervous because everyone was staring at me expectantly and so I panicked.
"Um," I stammered, "not really."
"Should be numb by now," he said confidently, glancing at the clock.
He went for the drill. Once again, it whirred up with a hiss and he approached me as I pressed my body as far back into the seat as I could get.
I braced myself for the impact and once again, EXPLODING, otherworldly pain rocked through me as I writhed away from the drill.
 |
| Not everyone gets straight A's in dental school. |
I was crying and I got up and ran out into the waiting room.
My tooth had holes in it, but there was no way I was letting anyone near me with a dental drill after all that.
Mom brought me home and after that I started to have nightmares.
Recurring nightmares.
In them, a cruel mute dentist in a starchy coat would bend over me, coldly ignoring my screams as he tore out my teeth one-by-one, licking my tears with a sadistic pleasure.
I decided that I'd rather pour salt in my eyes than even go to a tooth cleaning and so I didn't ever go back to that dentist.
I did all the research I could and found out that that dentist office was a low-cost clinic, one known for employing newer, less experienced dentists because my parents didn't have dental insurance and we were poor.
Five years later when I needed work done on my front teeth, I brought myself over to a very-very expensive dentist who specialized in trauma patients.
He asked me why I thought I was so afraid of dentists when I made my boyfriend come with me and hold my hand.... for my tooth cleaning and primary exam.
I told the dentist what happened.
He speculated that I might have been one of the unusual people who has 2 nerves running up to one tooth.
I don't know enough about teeth to know if that's true, but here's what I do know:
 |
| Oh, you had a cavity filled? Have some chicken soup. |
That dental visit traumatized me.
Here's why:
--Anything artificially flavored like banana gives me chills and brings forth a flashback.
--I have nightmares about the dentist and it makes me grind my teeth so hard that I wake up with a sore jaw and a headache.
--Whenever a friend casually mentions a dental procedure they've undergone, I feel a deep empathy and the irresistible desire to comfort them with my homemade chicken soup.
--The smell of a dentist office is enough to incite a panic attack, complete with shortness of breath, a dry mouth, dizziness and a rapidly thumping heart and the irresistible desire to flee.
It's because of my dentist phobia that I find myself Googling "Self tooth extraction" in the frantic hope that I can somehow avoid the dental office.
 |
| Thank god for Google, right? |
Every search result had a disclaimer strongly discouraging doing this without the help of a professional dentist.
Right now, a craggy half-gone tooth sits in my mouth and I just know that I'd rather keep it there, than take myself to a dentist to face my phobia.
I'm so amped up thinking about it that here I am.. at 2 a.m. typing away on my blog, fueled with anxiety and scared to go to sleep because of the dentist nightmare that's waiting for me.