I was lucky enough to be symmetrical and have a cavity in the same place on either side of my mouth. The dentist gave me a shot on each side (they were on the bottom, which is sooo much worse than the top) and after letting me sit he started drilling. It hurt so I let him know. He gave me another shot on each side of my mouth, which I felt (I HATE the shots!) and he started on the other tooth. That went fine and when he was done he went back to the first tooth. I could feel him drilling. So he decided to give me another shot. The assistant knew I hated the shots and said I shouldn’t feel it since I’d already had two on that side and if I did I could pinch the doctor 
well I felt it. They let it sit then started again. I still felt it when he was drilling. So he gave me a fourth shot. I was told if I felt this shot I could punch the dentist. I still felt the shot! And when he started drilling again I still felt pain (by now I’ve got tears streaming down my face and the assistant’s wiping them away and patting my shoulder) the doctor (he’s really nice but I wanted to kill him) said I was just wired funny and he didn’t know where else he could give me a shot so he just kept going, I had to grin an bear the pain till he was done. It took them and hour and a half and 6 shots to fill 2 little cavities. It was 10:30 at night by the time I could feel my face again, and man did it hurt! And to top it all off the filling is sensitive so I get pain when I eat certain things
Well, some of these are horrid!
My worst was back when I was about 12 or so. I had my first (and so far, only) cavities (2), had never had any before. I didn’t like the idea of a shot in the mouth, so I chose nitrous.
Aside: Well, how the hell do you know you have bad trips if you never had a trip before at all???
Nitrous - BAD TRIP. I fried. I went totally paranoid, I was positive that the entire staff was trying to kill me, and I couldn’t get away. I tried closing my eyes to be able to focus on counting (meditation), in hopes to survive… then was told I wasn’t permitted to do that, I wasn’t allowed to close my eyes at all, they needed to SEE my eyes (insert creepy mental soundtrack here). I was sure the doctor was trying to kill me and wanted to watch me die with my eyes open, or maybe couldn’t tell if he was giving me enough gas to kill me unless he could see my eyes. Or something. Something bad. Very, very bad.
An assistant walked by, glanced in, stopped, came back in and asked ‘are her eyes supposed to be dilated that far?’ I was positive now that she was in on the plot, too. I sweated, so terrified that I could not even flinch. I felt everything, too, just for fun. Every time that the dentist lied (“now I’m going to spray very cold water on your tooth” - while I’m hearing the drill and smelling scorched tooth and feeling the vibration in my jaw…), my paranoia went up another octave. (I hate when doctors lie this won’t hurt is such cr*p. How am I supposed to trust you when you LIE?) I started hyperventilating a bit - the assistant told me to take deep slow breaths, or it wouldn’t work (I heard that as ‘if you don’t breathe slowly, we won’t be able to kill you’ - but then I wasn’t sure if maybe by breathing fast I’d just die sooner, so I slowed down anyway…).
AHHHHHHHH! Still makes me clench up thinking about it.
Fortunately the effects wore off pretty fast, and I complained to my mom. Who complained to the doctor that they should have noticed something was wrong. The doctor gave her some line about knowing more about how my brain works than I do, being only 12, as if the bad trip being ‘only in my mind’ made it immaterial. He then reinforced his “Nyah, Nyah, I’m the doctor and you aren’t” attitude with saying with utter condescension that I shouldn’t have closed my eyes, because it makes the sensations stronger, (looking me in the eye) “like when you kiss” - hello, PEDIATRIC DENTIST is using KISSING as an analogy? Skeeved me out, right there… My mom suggested he try asking how his patients are doing, told him a thing or two about meditation, and took me out of there. She thereafter sent me to her own dentist, and I didn’t have any problems after that. (She was very calm, but her fury with him was so apparent that he kept stepping back from her - Nice to feel protected, especially after spending 30 minutes too terrified to pee.)
I also haven’t had any more cavities (despite periodically going 4-6 years without a visit), though I did chip a chunk out of a tooth once that needed a tiny filling, and I’ve had both those first fillings replaced. NOT using Nitrous, BTW. Haven’t had a bad dentist since.
And some people have wondered why I never tried drugs…
I am still recovering from my most recent (well, only, aside from braces) dental nightmare. I had a root canal in high school, which was performed by the best dentist in the world. Unfortunately, he moved away…Anyhoo, about 2 weeks before Christmas, my molar started to misbehave. A twitch here, a twinge there. I thought I could make it through to the first of the year. Reliably, real pain began December 23, when it was impossible to get into any dentist. On Christmas Eve morning, I was curled up on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, my whole jaw beginning to swell, my face throbbing.
I went to the ER. Three hours of intense pain and waiting later, I was sent home with 800 mg. Ibuprofen and an antibiotic, which made me puke as I could not keep anything on my stomach, not even water. Later that afternoon, I began to think I was dying from the pain and dry heaves. Back to the ER. This time, a nicer doctor gave me Lortab 5’s and a different anibiotic. Still no help. Back again that night. Still another, even nicer doctor. Finally, it appears we’re taking some action. My jaw was swollen to the point that it made contact with my chest, and he contacts the oral surgeon on call - who refuses to touch it because of the infection. He does, however, order I.V. antibiotics and I.V. pain meds (Dilaudid - whoo, boy!), but that means I’ll have to stay in the hospital over Christmas. I have a 2 year old and a 3 year old who are excited about the holidays for the first time, so mom-guilt sets in. I beg and plead, and we come to a compromise: they’ll leave my I.V. catheter in and I can go home but I must promise to come in every 8 hours for infusion. At home I take oral antibiotics and freshly-minted Percocets.
Christmas is a real joy, of course. At my mother-in-law’s I lie unconscious through the festivities. I wake up long enough to throw up on my shirt, and then we drive home.
Three days after Christmas I am well enough to have the tooth removed by the oral surgeon. All the pain of the past weeks was nothing in comparison to the paralyzing fear of having it jerked from my mouth. He refused to put me under, though I begged. He told me anyone who had had his or her tongue pierced wouldn’t be bothered by an extraction. He filled it full of Novocaine and grasped the tooth with pliers. Egads! I thought I was dying. He stopped and shoved what looked like a foot-long needle between my teeth, and I could hear a popping sound as he twisted and turned it under the skin. A quick jerk later and he was holding up the gory thing, blood and green pus dripping. This same concoction was now filling my mouth to capacity. I went for the spit tub. “No! Swallow it!” he warned. It smelled like something had died in mouth and tasted worse.
This has been my worst dental experience to date. Honestly, I would rather go through natural childbirth again before this.
Ok, I’ll keep the gory(sp?) details to myself, but I am going to list some things and let your imaginations do the rest.
- Impacted Molars
- 4
- No General Aneste…Ansteh…NO DRUGS
- NO LOCAL DRUGS
- I cried…a lot.
i got ya’ll beat!
my husband has had braces for 12 years. he has been wearing rubber bands for 2 years. they aren’t coming out for at least another year. THAT is HELL!
Tartar-Nazis
'nuff said.
Several incidents here easily trump mine, but I’ll share it anyway…
This is the procedure that made me change dentists. I never even actually let them do it, just the name was enough to send me screaming for the yellow pages.
Root planing.
It was described to me as “May need to lay your gum open to scrape tartar and infection from some roots.”
I now see a member of the faculty at a dental college, they accomplished the same thing using ultrasonics (which was still about a pucker factor of 9). My dentist is very capable and up-to-date, reasonably concerned with my discomfort, both physical and mental, and plays name that song with his cute assistant while listening to a classic rock station.
-mdf