There's something about the smell as soon as I go into the room...a tingle I get in my tummy when I lay back in the chair...and I always, always worry that I'm going to have to have a filling, in spite of everything I do with respect to dental hygiene.
Yesterday morning, my son was booked in for an extraction. He'd got one of those awkward canines where the new one's grown in at the front before the old one drops out, resulting in a new fang and an old babytooth that's jammed in place. Mr Squidge and I both hate teeth-related issues to the same degree, but as I can actually bear to look at a tooth being waggled and he can't, I drew the short straw.
We prepped T about what might happen to ease his nerves: he may or may not have an anaesthetic. The needle may or may not hurt...a lot. He may or may not need the dentist's foot on his chest to tug the blighter out...no, sorry, that was just my fear.
I don't know where this thing about teeth comes from, but it's not just at the dentist I get it. I can't watch Tom and Jerry cartoons without cringing, particularly the ones where Tom gets a sledgehammer in the mouth and his teeth crack and shatter and fall out. I dream about teeth too - not eating me, or anything like that.(I have dreamt about the cat biting me on more than one occasion. Unfortunately that just reflects reality.) I tend to dream of my teeth falling out. I've actually woken up trying to spit the bits of teeth out as they rattle around my mouth. Apparently it's a symbol of change or upheaval in life, or a fear of ageing. Funnily enough, I used to dream it more often in my late teenage years, when I was at uni.
Anyway...within five minutes of entering the consulting room, we were out again. T hadn't even realised the injection had gone in before the tooth was out. Hooray! And in spite of being quite definite that he did not want the tooth to put under his pillow, I noticed the last of the baby teeth being popped into a tiny plastic bottle which was then slipped into T's pocket...
Methinks the tooth fairy will have made her final visit overnight!
Despite content ------and dreams of teeth falling out -yes, I have those too, it was a good read.
ReplyDeleteI had a tooth out recently and it is so much easier than it used to be. I was surprised. But that doesn't stop the fear. I am with you! :)
Get same feeling when I am in hospitals.
Weird, isn't it? The daft thing is that I've no had any majorly bad experiences with dentists - so it's not even as if I can say 'It all started when...'
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