Mum's Dentist

Yesterday I went with my Mum to her dentist and wow am I glad I did my research before I chose my own! It was not a nice place, don't get me wrong im sure the dentists were lovely but I did not get a good vibe from the place. The doorway was small and pokey and inside was really cluttered and felt like it needed a coat of paint at least. *shudders*

In comparison my dentist has a lovely practice, it's brand new and has a nice and open reception. Im so so glad I did my research!

I Did It!

I am feeling on top of the world today people because I went to my dentist treatment appointment yesterday and it was great! I felt fine leading up to it but just in case I had a last minute freakout the dentist had given me some happy pills (can't think of the technical term) to take a half hour before my treatment. I was supposed to get to the office half hour before and take them in the waiting room because I had never taken anything like that before and they wern't sure how I would react. However I was a little late so I took them in the car on the way over (it's ok I wasn't driving). I waited for these dream pills to kick in ....an waited .....and waited lol but I didn't feel any effect from them. Apparently it can be hard to judge the dosage to give someone if they have never had them before so it the effects can vary greatly.

As it turned out though it didn't really matter as I was still feeling fine about going for the treatment :-) The dentist was really nice, he checked I was ok to go ahead even though the pills hadn't had an effect and he asked if I wanted to do the filling or the cleaning today. I didn't really mind at this point so he said since the filling was so tiny we would go ahead with the cleaning at this appt and work up to the filling.

I had LS injections so that I would feel anything and im so happy to say these were fine! He is going to do the cleaning in 4 seperate visits so that I don't have too much to go through each time so yesterday I had the upper right side of my mouth done. The whole thing was such a breeze that I can't believe I was so scared of the dentist for all those years! The injections did take a while but the dentist eplained this was because theyare less painfull if you do them slower so he had no complaints from me there! I did feel tiny little stings at times but in no way was it unbearable :-)

I mention in an earlier post a dental fear forum that I had been visiting and I remembered a poster on there had said that he didn't close his eyes when having injections done because then you are cutting off one of your senses and focusing more on the others e.g. the feeling of the needle in your mouth! So, and I was so proud of myself here, I kept my eyes open and even had a sneaky peek at the needle to reassure myself that it wasn't some massive scary thing!

The whole thing didn't take long at all and was such a breeze. Im so so chuffed that I now have a dentist and can have treatment, it's such a weight off my mind. For so long my dental fear was this awful thing hanging over my head, always worrying me slightly, now I feel free! I actually feel like there is nothing I can't do at the moment :-)

I still have another 3 cleaning appts and 1 filling appt to go but im honestly not worried about it! Yay.

Dentist Appt Tomorrow

Hey All,

Tomorrow I have my first treatment dentist appt in years! Funnily enough my sister also has a dentist appt tomorrow to have her braces off. She is so excited about this, she's had them on for 16 months so it's going to be wierd but amazing to have them off. She is also going to have amazing teeth now andit really makes me glad that I decided to go for my treatment too, I would hate it if she had fab teeth and I didn't!

I other news my weight loss is going not so well. We had takeaway chips last night and I had a bar of Galaxy, I think it's going to take a few days for my head to get around the fact that I need to eat differently now. Has anybody had any success with weightloss products diets out there?

As it's Sunday today that always means a big family dinner day so im expecting today not to be great on the weightloss front also. I will keep you all posted though!

First Healthy Breakfast

Today I had my first healthy breakfast on my weight loss regime, I had a bowl full of strawberry's. Im feeling pretty good about this at the moment but I really hope I don't snack on anything bad for me bow before lunch!

Weight

Well I just weighted myself for the first time in ages and im 12 and a half stone! That's about half a stone more than I thought and is sooo not good. I really need to start the weightloss asap.

Any ideas on what works people??

Appt on Monday

Well all I have my first denist treatment appointment coming up on Monday and im still feeling pretty much ok so far :-) I still can't believe im saying that since I was such a reck not long ago. I don't know how i'll feel whe im actually on the way to / in the appt bu im just glad so far so good. I jus hope that when they come to give me the injections that I dn't move my head away like a wimp, fingers crossed I don't anyway! But if I kept still when I was a kid im assuming something takes over you and you don't move in case they end up dragging the needl across you mouth or something horrific like that! But anyway like I say, I assume if I could keep still as a kid then I can keep still now.

In other news I am officially now going to try and start loosing some weight! Im not sure exactly how much yet but im going to try and eat alot more healthy and do much more excersise. Im actually looking forward to that to, I feel like im on some sort of roll now bodywise :-)

No Reply :-(

Well I had no reply from the Bristol dentist, I couldn't face calling them so I asked my sister to email as well but sure enough the same thing happened, no reply. Looking back now though this might be a blessing in discuise as, after airing my issues to the forum one of the admins posted a link to another dentist in Bath that dealth with scared people.

I sent a similar email to them and receved a reply almost straight way saying that they had an appointent the next week and to give them a call if I wanted to book. That seemed to be all the encouragement I needed and I then fel able to give the receptionist a call and book an appointment! OMG it was scary and I could acually feel my heart beating but luckily I got throught it, yay!

The week leading up to my appointment wasn't as bad as I thought. I was expecting everything from not being able to sleep to not eating, everything but actually I had none of that. (Shame really on the eating thing as I could do with loosing a few lbs lol).

The appoinment itself was ok as well! The dentist was lovely and before I knew it I had been in there 45 mins and had been told I needed a clean and 1 filling. I was so happy that I didn't need dentures that the rest was a happy blur!

Anyway my first treatment appointmet is coming up in a few weeks and I actually feel fine about it so far! :-)

The Dentist Saga Continued ..

So one day I was sitting around wondering how I was going to overcome this particular hurdle when I happened to Google dental phobia. It was one of the best things I have ever done! I found a forum site dedicated to people who felt exactly as I did, check it out here if you have any of the same issues - http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/forum/

This forum was exactly what I needed as the main probem I had in all this was thinking that I was the only one who felt this scared of the dentist. This site is full of people who were as scared, or if not more so than me! I couldn't believe it, it let me breath a big sigh of relief thats for sure. I didn't sign up straight away but began reading some of the peoples posts and in some cases it was as if I was writing myself, so similar were our issues.

Eventually I did create an account and set up my own thread listing some of my worries and actually when I got to thinking about it it did seem like my fear of the actual dentist had lessened over the years and instead I now was more scared about what I would need done because I had left it so long. There were scary stories on dentalfearcentral about people, some of them quite young needing dentures :-( That soon became my new fear.

Anyway I started to think that maybe I could book a check up appointment but I specifically wanted to find a dentist that someone on the forum had tried out first. Luckily that have a dentist recommendation section so I started looking through that, but there didn't turn out to be that many from my area, only really one in Bristol which was a sedation clinic that knocked people for absolutly all treatment. I wasn't toally against this however so I popped them an email and crossed my fingers that they would reply sooner rather than later!

Hi and Welcome!

Hello all and welcome to the first post of my new blog!

I have never had a blog before and it's quite exciting, like a strange form of self indulgent therapy :-)

Anyway I wanted to start this blog as i've had a touch of upheavel lately and thought this would be a good way to organise my thoughts.

Firstly a little about myself - I recently got made redundant from my Sales job which I had been working at for about 8 months. I had moved to that job straight from another one in Sales and o had been having a bash at this sales lark for about 3 years in total and it was ok, I didn' love it to death or anything but as jobs go it was fine. About 12 of us got made redundant in total and it was a fairly horrible time at the office, people crying and gibbering in corners and the like and I can totally see their point, mortgages still had to be paid, kids fed etc. But for me it really wasn't so bad, I lived at home with my parents and didn't really have any big expenditure that I couldn't immediatly stop. Besides, I had long been feeling that I would maybe like to try something different, these feelings wern't strong enough to leave a nice job but they were defo there and so I thought maybe I could see this as an oppertunity amongst other things.

The first thing to note, is that I haven't immediatly been looking for a new job, since for the mo I had nothing else to concentrate on I thought that I could dedicate my time to something that I had been wanting to crack for sometime and that was my horrendous fear of the dentist.

Now anyone who's ever been terrified of the men with the masks and tooth picks will know what I mean here and the rest of you wont have a clue. I don't just mean I was a little scared as in feeling slightly gittery just before an appointment, I mean so mind numbingly terrifed that I didn't go to my appointments! Not since I was in my early teens as best guess (can't tell you exacty when as my mind has blanked that particular period of terror out).

It's a terrible thing being scared of the dentist. At first you block the whole dental world out completely, stop thinking about them and just walk away from the conversation if anyone show signs of mentioning this scary world. You tell yourself that you will go when you get toothache, which is sure to happen at some point as you hear about it all the time from fried or on TV or whatever. BUT what about when this doesn't happen? And don't get me wrong here im very very very glad not to have had toothache in the past however long it's been since my poor mother stopped dragging me to the dentist but you do start to wonder how you are going to get yourself there with the absence of sharp, head shacking pains that would defo act as an incentive. Answers anyone??