I’m sure I say this over and over again each and every time I have to go to the dentist for a cleaning.  Today though, it wasn’t a cleaning, it was time to replace an old cavity.  Needless to say, it’s the driling that kind of scares me to death.

You see, when I was a little kid, we had a horrible, horrible dentist.  Anytime he worked on my teeth, he never gave me enough Novocain.  Needless to say, I could feel the drilling. ALL the drilling. I’d cry. I’d scream and he would tell my grandmother that I was just being a brat that there’s no way I could feel anything.  For the record, he was wrong.

So now as an adult, I have a bit of a complex.  I don’t avoid the dentist.  I do go to my regularly schedule appointments and I sit through whatever horrible things they plan to do to me (mostly cleanings – horrifying, I know).  But…and here it is…I kind of freak out a bit.  I hold my breath, I tense up, I white knuckle the arms of the chair and my eyes will uncontrollably tear (like with cutting onions – not quite crying).

My dentist and his team though, they’re great.  They have it in their file that I want more Novocaine that I’d ever actually need (they oblige) and that they need to do things one step at a time so I can take breathing breaks all the while walking me through the entire process.

It’s funny though.  As an adult I know it’s a silly fear.  I know that I’m no longer a child and whatever dentist I go to will listen to me and work with me.  I know it won’t hurt and even if I did, they’d immediately stop whatever they were doing and fix it.  It’s just one of those silly things we worry about leftover from childhood.

I guess that’s why no matter how many times my husband or friends suggest I switch to getting gas prior to treatment I won’t (and they’ve offered at my current office).  That just seems like such an extreme when I know deep down that all will be well.  I’ll just stick to taking a Xanax prior to going – LOL.  And well, in the end, I just know that I’m not the biggest fan of dentists in general, but I love my dentist and would recommend him to anyone looking for a dentist.

So how ’bout you…any fear of the dentist?  What about some other fear left over from childhood?