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How do you handle the dentist? Dental Assault—the Two Hour Filling

Autism, SPD, and the dentist
A couple of weeks ago I made a trip to the dentist. I hate the dentist. I have notoriously bad teeth and always have. When I was a child the Fort Wayne Dentist always said I had soft teeth with weak enamel. A friend of mine goes to a dentist surgery called A Shop for Smiles in La Mesa and she absolutely loves her dentist! As for me, lately I have been reading accounts of dentist telling other spectrum children that same thing-an interesting coincidence?

Smells Make Me Nauseous

For me, a visit to the dentist is assaultive. The smells permeating the air in the office turn my stomach. I don’t seek the dentist out often; I usually go when I am in pain. But since I am hypo-sensitive to deep pain, I almost never have a toothache-not anything that would make me seek help. At least not until there is essentially no tooth or root left to save. This is much different from my friend who couldn’t even have ice in her drink until she started going to Babiner Dental!
I had to make a dental appointment; my crown fell out of my mouth. It was one of my front teeth and I had a mini-pointed vampire looking tooth underneath the crown. I submit that had it been in a less visible place I would have put it off for a while.
The office staff was so polite, and the dentist so friendly and pleasant that I decided I would come back for the fillings I desperately need. I knew that I would have to go, you really have to go to the dentist if there is something wrong with your teeth. Even if you’ve never been to the dentist, just simply google something like dentist colorado springs (or wherever you live) and you’ll easily be able to find a dentist near you. Luckily I knew which dentist to use, so when my filling fell out, I knew exactly where to go. That is why I found myself there on this occasion-a filling.
Two hours later-yes-two hours my filling was complete.

Stimming Through the Panic

The dentist was nice enough, but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. She came in, gave me a shot to numb the area and left the room! That’s when the panic began.
For reasons that I cannot yet explain (though I have a theory) I panic when I take pain medication, and anything that causes a fuzzy or numbing sensation. The needle in my mouth was not painful at all, but the feeling of numbness had my insides shaking. I was trying desperately to practice my deep breathing until the numb feeling wore off, which is always does.
I forgot my earplugs home and had nothing to squish into little shapes to calm myself down. Since the earplugs are my dual purpose tool, used to drown out background sounds, and to calm my nerves, I have no need to carry around an additional stress ball. Well-I forgot them home, so I rung my hands, and flapped my foot until I could breathe.

Numbing Agent Wears off too Quickly

By the time the dentist and her technician returned and began to try to fill the cavity, the pain medication had mostly worn off. I allowed her to drill anyway because the pain itself was still mostly tolerable. I did not want another shot of numbness, but it was wearing off too quickly.
Another shot, and out of the room they went-again. The cycle started over I pushed past my panic, the meds started to wear off, and they came back in to finish filling my tooth. This time I had pain immediately. The drill shot cold water into my mouth while she was drilling. I can’t even brush my teeth with cold water. That drill was excruciating. When it was changed to a drill without the shooting water, I was able to tolerate it. How odd? But that too didn’t last very long…
A total of four times it took repeating this same process with me thinking that the dentist and her staff were complete idiots. After all don’t they know that the numbing agent doesn’t last that long. Give me the shot, and hurry-drill!

Through the Pain…

During the final time, once again the pain medication wore off. I wanted to be out of there, no more shots I needed this to be over with. I slipped an elastic pony tail holder out of my hair and slipped it around my wrist. While the dentist drilled I slid and rolled the elastic band back and forth between my thumb and forefinger. I was able to ignore much of the pain. I wasn’t letting this dentist know it hurt; I needed to be done.
At this point it wasn’t really the pain that was bothering me; it was the drilling. The noise, the vibrations, all shaking and scratching the inside of my head made my brain feel like it was going to explode. The bright light that had been positioned over my face for the past two hours felt like its rays were stabbing me in the eyeballs-and they were closed.
The last thing the dentist said to me before I left was, “you will probably be numb for about two more hours, so don’t eat anything solid until then-so you don’t accidently bite yourself.”
“Um…ok.” I was already not numb!
The whole ordeal took over two hours-two hours, to get a tooth filled. Then they wonder why I avoid the dentist at all costs.

Calming Down

I made a B-line for the bathroom, closed myself in, and took some deep breathes. I splashed water on my face, which was extremely flushed, and try to calm myself before having to talk to anyone behind the desk to pay and make my next appointment.
By the time I left I felt completely assaulted, I was exhausted, and I desperately just wanted to take a nap. Unfortunately, I had an appointment with my doctor and was already running late.
After showing up frazzled and flushed, I explained what happened at the dentist. In the middle of my ranting and raving about their stupidity he stopped me.

What I learned floored me!

Apparently, everyone does not get numb immediately just to have it quickly wear off. And it doesn’t usually take four rounds of shots and two hours to fill a tooth! It always has for me, and here I go again-it truly never occurred to me that others did experience the exact same thing.
By now I should know better. I should know to question everything. I should know that if I feel it, it doesn’t mean they do. If I know it, it does mean everyone knows it. And if I am thinking it, it doesn’t mean they are thinking it too! So why does it still shock me?
Now I wonder if I am the only one-again. How many others on the spectrum experience the dentist this way? Does anyone? What about the children? When I was a child, a visit to the dentist never went well. I dreaded it, and I am sure my mother dreaded as well. I used to leave angry-angry at my mother (didn’t she know what it felt like?), angry at the dentist (didn’t she know what it felt like?), and angry at myself because my terrible teeth, anger, and bad behavior was all my own fault.
How do you tolerate the dentist?
How do your children tolerate the dentist?
Do they know they may be experiencing it differently? Does the dentist know?[ googleplusauthor ]

Jeannie Davide-Rivera

Jeannie is an award-winning author, the Answers.com Autism Category Expert, contributes to Autism Parenting Magazine, and the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. She lives in New York with her husband and four sons, on the autism spectrum.

9 Comments:

  1. I quit going to the dentist. The bright lights hurt my eyes, the smells are nauseating, fluoride makes me sick like most weird modern chemicals do, the spinning polishing brush is painful, and I always get the hygienist with a bad attitude who thinks I’m just ” a big baby”. They literally say that. Had one who believed the sun had special powers to zap plaque because eating in the morning and not brushing until evening was better for your teeth than eating at night and brushing an hour later.

    Pain medication is fairly hit-and-miss with me. Even with medicines meant to cause paralysis I retain full movement and sensation, just no pain. The first time I had stitches I told my mom exactly how many there were before anybody told me because I felt it all. Just no pain. It is very unnerving to feel metal slicing and stabbing through your skin without the pain to block those specific feelings out.

    • Seriously? Doesn’t everyone feel the slicing and pulling just without any pain??? I ALWAYS feel everything even if the pain is not there…to me it just sounds really odd that others do not. Then again, I never seem to run out of things that I find out others do not experience that way I do!

      BTW,I have had awful experiences with the dentists going all the way back to being 3 and 4 years old because of my horrid teeth and soft enamel. Now, as an adult with equally awful teeth, I am constantly breaking them on things like SOFT BREAD. It’s ridiculous, but going to the dentist is very hard for me. A few years back I let them pull out many teeth and do a partial denture only to find out that I cannot tolerate the thing in my mouth. Feels funny, makes everything taste funny, I gag, and cannot talk right! It is a good thing I didn’t let them convince me to pull em all and do a full denture because it would have been easier, cheaper, and “prettier” in my mouth.

  2. I HATE THE DENTIST!

    I think they actually have a note in my charts that says to give me headphones, because otherwise even just during a teeth cleaning, the sound of the scraping and the toothbrush makes me twitch everytime I hear it (and I imagine it is quite difficult to clean teeth with that). So now they just throw headphones at me and I can drown it out.

  3. Hi, just found your blog.

    Odd question, but are you bendy? I mean, are you hyper-flexible / double jointed? Just on the off chance that you are, you may want to look up Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome if you don’t already know about it. An odd thing about EDS is that anesthetics don’t work very well (I have to get tons of shots at the dentist and I STILL feel pain. Also, I’m hypersensitive to pain.) There is no proof, but people in the EDS community have noticed that an awful lot of EDSers are themselves autistic or have family members that are autistic. That’s what led to my diagnosis of Asperger’s at the “late” age of 28. 😀 Great blog, by the way!

    • That is funny I am quite bendy! LOL Our neighbors daughter was just commenting on how my thumbs can actually bend backwards at the joints. So, that is kind of interesting I will have to look up EDS.

  4. Yes, the dentist is truly horrible. I had two major fillings yesterday and I have still not recovered. Previous visits to the dentist were even worse, but I didn’t know I was Aspie then. Yesterday I made sure I did deep breathing and discovered that tapping a regular rhythm on my arm really helped while they were drilling. I felt totally violated and was shaking all the way home. I was then in shock and slept for 2hours. Today I am shut down, my body doesn’t respond to my brain, I can’t think straight, I am exhausted, anxious and vacant.

    • I had another appointment this past week, but woke up with a horrible sore throat. Normally I would have yelled at myself for whining and went to my appointment anyway, which would have been a disaster.

      The advantage of now knowing about my Asperger’s allowed me to stop and tell myself that I know it would be a bad idea to go, and actually cancel the appointment (without the guilt). I’m very glad I did not go.

  5. I have a scary dentist story. I rarely get panic attacks, but when I do I can feel them coming on shortly before it happens. I was at a dentist appointment several months ago and they gave me novacane on both sides of my mouth and then they left the room until it started to numb my mouth. I usually handle novacane fairly well. But this time I could not feel my tongue and I felt like I couldn’t swallow. Then my heart started pounding and I felt like I needed to get up and walk around. I remained seated hoping the feeling would pass before they came back. But I kind of remained in that nervous condition of feeling like I couldn’t swallow, my heart beating faster than normal, almost of the edge of a panic attack. Then they came back in the room, ready to drill into two of my teeth. So I told them that I sometimes have panic attacks and that the novacane was making me feel like a panic attack could come on at any moment. And they all minimized my concern and said, “Oh, don’t worry about that. That’s normal. Your heart rate has probably increased a little. It’s nothing to worry about.” I tried to tell them that it was indeed something to worry about and that if it got worse I could really start freaking out, but they just didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about or what a panic attack even was. They kept downplaying it like it was nothing to worry about. I finally convinced them that if I gave a certain signal it means I need to get up and walk around and maybe go outside for a few minutes and get some air. I think they thought I was insane. But I never actually had a full blown panic attack and after about 20 minutes of them working on my teeth the feeling finally went away.

    It is rare to have the feeling that a panic attack is coming on but not quite reach the level of a full panic attack. I think it had something to do with the heavy dose of novacane in both sides of my mouth which sent my heart rate soaring and made me feel like my throat was swelling up. In the future, I am going to request a different anesthetic instead of novacane, probably laughing gas.

    • That happens to me all the time; having the feeling that a panic attack is coming on but not quite reaching the level… many times I do get that feeling that I can’t swallow and my throat feels swollen, and then I feel like I won’t be able to breathe.

      Same thing happened when I was given Morphine in the ER after a very clumbsy painful fall I took–thought I broke my hip luckily I didn’t. I was definitely beginning to have a panic attack. I don’t like medication–of any kind, least of all numbing pain meds.

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