Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Dental Anxiety, Or, Sorry Mama!

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the dentist.
I haven't been to a dentist in over three years.
I am very scared of tomorrow morning's appointment.
Before you all start judging me, I would like to state the following, and that is that like any self-respecting 80s kid, I am blaming this gross neglect of dental happiness on my parents.
From when I had teeth until I moved to Germany about 5 years ago, I had the same dentist, Dr. Lie. Dr. Lie was awesome. His wife was his assistant, and they made a dynamite team. I was never afraid of going to the dentist, because I knew and trusted Dr. Lie with my teeth like I'd never trust anyone else with anything.
But then, when I was about 14 years old, I had to have braces. My orthodontist was a German lady and quite nice, but she had the biggest nostrils imaginable, which I was of course always staring into, while being fitted more instruments (and accesories) of torture. Her team was incredibly inept, which meant I sometimes ended up with bits of wire sticking into my cheeks and gums. In case you're wondering: it is not nice to have to ask your mum to use a nailclipper in your mouth because you have a wire sticking into your cheek (and I'm sure my mum wasn't too thrilled about it either). This started my fear of dentists in general, and German dentists in particular.
I moved to Germany, where I went to a dentist (my braces having been removed at this point in time), who started filing my front teeth to make them more symmetrical. I don't even have words for that kind of insanity.
I then had to have two of my wisdom teeth cut out because they were growing horizontally rather than vertically (Paul, if you are reading this, don't read the rest!!). I won't bore/gross you out with the details, but I did not like this experience. I could feel everything being cut and broken, and was actually crying throughout the entire procedure. I then got an infection, which was a nice addition to an already quite traumatic experience.
When all this was over and I moved to England, I somehow just never got around to going to the dentist... So I hope that tomorrow, I will be reasonably cavity-less and not too much yelled at by my new (and hopefully lovely) dentist.
(In case you were wondering: my parents are to blame because they, of course, picked Dr. Lie and the German evil dentists and thus scarred me for life.)

******UPDATE*****

I have 'excellent cleaning' and all my teeth are 'sound'. The receptionist is evil and I had to pay £42.50 to get the wire, which is glued behind my bottom front teeth, reglued to one of those teeth. Haha, I laugh in the face of people who say you should go to the dentist every 6 months. HAHA!! But I promise you I will not let the knowledge that I have excellent cleaning go to my head... too much.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now you see, when you start talking about evil german dentists I instantly think about Laurence Olivier as the evil Nazi dentist in Marathon Man http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqewLvnlM7c

That was one harrowing post dutchie! I have a real fear of dental surgery. I actually feel quite nausious now. Ive never been scared of dentists because I have literally never had ANYTHING done to my teeth. Its a joke in my family about how every time i go to the dentists it takes about 5 minutes because there is never anything wrong. The reason i take such good care of my teeth however is because Im absolutely petrified that one day some dentist is going to come at me with a drill!

This post has officially scarred me for life! You poor thing. Im sure you'll be absolutely fine. If they come at you with any instruments of torture just scream, knock them down and run away!

But Im sure all will be well

Supportive hugs

Lizzy
-x-