Getting over the fear of dentists

Us older folk tend to believe a lot of things were better when we were children. Dentistry is not one of them. I had to go to the town dentist. He was a giant of a man with fingers the size of bananas and played in the front row of the town’s rugby team.

My fragile six-year-old mind believed extraction by uppercut was his procedure of choice. The result was a fear of dentists that remains to this day, half a century later. Naked fear.

So when little Egg showed anxiety during her first dentist visit, I had all the compassion in the world. I made an appointment at a paediatric dentist – and what an eye-opener this was!

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Nowadays, they use something called conscious sedation, which is commonly used in dentistry for people who feel anxious. Sedative medications are delivered directly to your bloodstream through an IV line in the dentist chair.

Most people who receive IV sedation fall asleep and have little to no memory of their treatment when they wake up.

Yesterday morning I took Egg to the dentist’s rooms. The staff were dressed in uniforms with pictures of dinosaurs, the dentist chair was covered in a children’s fabric and there were soft toys everywhere. Before she knew what was happening, she was fast asleep and the dentist completed the two fillings.

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“She will be disoriented for an hour or two. She might suffer from double vision for a while. And she will be sleepy,” the dentist warned me before Egg woke up.

“Wow, that was fun,” Egg said when we drove home. Let that sink in for a moment.

“A child with a fear of dentists who describes two fillings as fun. Not bearable – fun. Did you see the dentist’s teddy bear?” she asked me.

“That teddy and I frolicked all over the place while unicorns flew around overhead.”

And that for the price of a good night out. Okay, a very good night out with a friend or two. But I can’t remember ever seeing unicorns after a bout of pubcrawling in my drinking days.

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“Do you treat adults?” I asked the dentist. “Adults with extreme fear of dentists, yes,” she replied. I’m going to make an appointment. My teeth are in a terrible state. And I can really do with a bit of frolicking with teddy bears and unicorns.