Those of you that have followed my
musings on Facebook know my fear of the dentist. I call it my heart attack; can
hardly get out of bed fear. When I worked construction, the knowledge that at
any moment, working at the heights I was working my life could end didn’t
instill any fear remotely close to my fear of the dentist. A guy once rear
ended me on the Dan Ryan on my way home from work. Instead of having any type
of fear, I jumped out of my truck with a tire iron in hand yelling at the idiot
that I was late to pick up my son’s new bowling ball. Hmm, had he had a white
lab jacket on that said Dr. Anybody, I probably would have taken a step back or
stayed my happy butt in my truck.
Watching commercials about dentists even causes some type of anxiety,
yep I’m pretty bad.
I can trace the dental fear back to
when I was a kid. I’ve always had soft teeth and my brother and I weren’t
allowed to eat a lot of candy. It’s true, that’s why there are old pictures of
us with candy in our multi colored over the knee socks….in Alabama with my
granddaddy. So anyway, I had a mouthful of cavities and the dentist my mom took
us to had no concept of Novocain; at least that’s my long held belief. This
short elderly woman with the long white coat and Dr. Anybody written in black
script across the top decided to save time, she would fill all the cavities at
once. It would be faster to do it without Novocain as she wouldn’t have to wait
for it to kick in. I bet you can guess, that didn’t work out too well and my
mom had to drag me kicking and screaming on the next visit. Once a dentist gave
me laughing gas and we had gone to my grandma’s for a bit, Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory was on and I laughed through the whole movie. I was sick for three days once those effects
wore off, not pleasant for a kid when all your friends are outside playing and
you’re stuck in bed.
As I’ve aged, the fear is still
intense; intense enough that my son laughs about it. Lucky brat, I’ve always
had someone else take him to the dentist so I wouldn’t pass my fears on to him.
I’ve just recently, in the past couple of years, been able to take him myself;
I have to have ear buds in listening to music while he’s back with the dentist.
I’ve started to develop my own theory about fears and the proverbial parental
cord. It seems that when my mom was alive the pervasive fear of the dentist,
failure, sometimes just breathing was highly intense and finally the fear of
success. Whew that’s a lot to carry on ones’ shoulders, but I did it. When my
mom passed, and that proverbial cord that I had been trying to cut forever and
a day was finally cut, a bit of relief washed over me. Now before you say what
a bad daughter for feeling that way, understand that my mom and I had a hate
dislike relationship. I’ll just say she was an excellent grandmother to my son
and he was blessed to have her; some people can be the greatest person around
but that doesn’t make them great parents.
Now, once that cord was cut, I felt
like I could put on my big girl bloomers and rock the world. There’s still a
little problem….the darn dentist. It’s almost comical to think that a middle
aged woman (Dang, middle aged? When did that happen?!!!) can let a childhood
fear almost paralyze her. The upshot is I’m not the only one that has this fear
as an adult. There are some stories that are worse than mine, I wish I hadn’t
heard them, but they’re out there. There should be a gathering of people that
endured sadistic dentists that were embedded in draconian times, I’m sure that
gathering would fill a few rooms.
I guess the next chapter of life
will be me trying to let go of that fear, I’m off to an ok start. I had my
front tooth pulled recently and I didn’t go into a massive panic attack. There’s
a whole story behind that tooth and it died a noble, smelly death. I didn’t
even bother to remember the dentists’ name because I wasn’t expecting to go
back. She is good, so I guess I’m going back. That was the first time ever that
I didn’t have any pain at the hands of some sadist in a white coat. I have two
more teeth that have to be yanked, so while this leaves me walking around
temporarily missing a front tooth, finally having a healthy mouth is on the
horizon. To the teacher that laughed when I ran into a wall and cracked my
dearly departed tooth, I’d like to thank you for helping to instill some of
that fear. Standing in front of a nine year old, in a fake guffaw and saying
how much that’s going to hurt to get fixed in front of the whole class did
wonders. I say that ever so sarcastically.
I taught my son to have no fear of
anything, not sure if that’s good or bad since he believes he’s invincible.
What he should fear is mom knocking the hot mess out of him when he decides he
thinks he wants to be grown at my expense, other than that, nope no fears. For
those of you that have little kids, don’t laugh about their fears, they’re
real. When parents make fun of their kids’ fears, especially like my mom did, I
think that is a form of bullying. My generation and my parents’ generation come
from a long line of bullying. We’re now in times when it’s ok to have fears and
to be nurtured through those fears. That’s how you make the fears go away. So
many health issues can be caused because of tooth problems. In my case, because
of the fear they wouldn’t know if I had a heart attack because of bad teeth or
out of fear of the dentist. Either way, I’m not trying to go in that direction.
I think I just earned another pair of big girl bloomers J ~ Just my two cents
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