Penny
Dear Penny,
You are certainly not the only person to deal with this. The good news is there is a great solution. That being said, I do not think you are with the right dentist to help you. He doesn’t seem compassionate and doesn’t understand what is happening to you. Given your highly negative experiences with dental appointments, it is natural for you to have a significant amount of dental anxiety.
One thing to be aware of is that when you have dental anxiety it impacts the effectiveness of your Novocain. This is why it hasn’t worked for you. The great news is that there is a solution. You need to see a dentist who offers dental sedation, preferably oral conscious sedation. This is administered by pill and will completely relax you, which in turn enables the Novocain to do its job. Most people are so relaxed that they end up sleeping through their appointments.
The one downside to the complete relaxation is you will need someone to drive you to and from your appointment and stay with you at home until you are lucid and steady on your feet. This is mostly to prevent you from falling if you get up to go to the bathroom. I’d plan on a nice day of bingeing your favorite shows.
A secondary benefit to this type of sedation is it allows you to get more work done at each appointment. This means you can catch up on all that dental work much sooner than would otherwise be possible.
Give this a try and I’m confident you’ll find it will change your life.
This blog is brought to you by West Seneca Dentist Dr. Carl Embury.
