A small step forward

If you can bear to wade through all of this please try, the important bit comes last!

As anyone who has been a regular reader here will know, I detest going to the dentist and whilst I am well aware that no-one relishes it, my dislike goes the irrational extra mile to a diagnosed phobia. However, not wishing for my teeth to fall apart I have had all the psych. treatments and have rarely missed an appointment in my life, save for the five years I lived in Scotland, where dentists no longer play the NHS game and as a consequence I couldn't even get registered!

All this effort paid off, or so it seemed. I have only two fillings to date, relatively pristine white teeth and all was looking well, my sleepless nights before an appointment and hours of sitting rigid and sweating in the dentists chair, employing one or other coping mechanism to prevent the 'flight' aspect of the flight or fight response catapulting me out of the door had worked, it was all worth it...wrong! Sods law of course just had to dictate otherwise!

I was recently diagnosed with advanced periodontal disease which for those of you not familiar is a severed form of what we usually refer to as gum disease and in it's early stages has few easily detectable symptoms. The 'lucky' ones get the early warning of bleeding gums, I didn't and added to that, mine was taking hold the time I was in Scotland and so through no fault of my own it went undiagnosed at a stage when intervention was important. I won't start though on all that again, it's well documented here previously and if you have a mind too you can find it all by clicking the 'dentistry' tag in the sidebar.

So, what's the upshot of all of this? Well, in a nutshell my otherwise perfectly healthy teeth are literally falling out of my head, one gone already, one as wobbly as a child's and most of the remaining molars beginning to wobble tentatively! For me, as I suspect it would be for many this is pretty horrifying not only for the obvious reasons but also in my case because it means lots of dental treatment in an effort to hang onto them as long as possible...though that may not be very long! Add to that perio. disease can be a factor in the risk of heart attack.

None of this was helped by an unfortunate encounter recently with a particularly brusque and unsympathetic dentist, who managed in one fell swoop to reinstate my previously almost beaten dental phobia in one visit, by telling me he needed to extract XYZ teeth 'now'...and wouldn't entertain either discussion or my fear. Needless to say I declined his offer and set about some research.

As a result yesterday I had an appointment with a private dental hygienist, even attending the hygienist fills me with dread these days, in fact the mere mention of anything dental does, quite literally even the word 'dentist' sends my anxiety and adrenaline levels sky high, so much so that this post has been a long time in coming, I couldn't even get it written down until now!

And that's where the title 'a small step forward' comes in. I made it to the appointment calm enough to hold a coherent conversation and not as high as a kite on diazepam and the woman herself was fab, she took time with me, she explained my options at length and with honesty and she promised me that whilst I will still likely lose some, if not all of my teeth, as long as I keep doing what she tells me she will make every effort to enable me to hang onto them as long as possible. Reading between the lines I also understood that I am not alone in having had issues with Mr nastybrusquedentistman, so I felt a little vindicated.

All that and I went on my own, which might sound amusing to most of you but it's only the second time in my life, at my ripe old age, that I have actually made it to a dental appointment alone! She spent almost an hour working in my mouth and not once did I have to ask for a break! I know that it maybe doesn't seem a 'big deal' to many, I know I shouldn't be so frightened but phobia, by it's very nature is irrational and I am quite proud of myself!

Now, the warning; Periodontal disease is caused by a few things, firstly it is something some of us just have a predisposition too, secondly stress is thought to be indicated as a cause but thirdly and most importantly, smoking causes it to advance much quicker than it would naturally, so if like me you thought the fags wouldn't get you, don't count on it....one way or another they might! There you have it, my own bloody fault in part at least, albeit when I began smoking no-one knew any of this. And just in case you are still in any doubt about just how much of a hassle this is, it hurts, eating is an issue, invariably at any given time I have parts of my mouth that are too painful to use or infections in my gum and cleaning my teeth has gone from the normal five minute job, to something much more protracted, in an effort to at least slow down the advance....no amount of money or dental work is going to fix it or cure it.

So, that's my next big issue...but please, no nagging, I don't respond to pressure but I'm onto it and getting to a place where perhaps I can take my next step forward.