Facing Up To Dental Anxiety!

From as young as I can remember I was terrified of the dentist.  Every time my mum would take me to an appointment my constant squirming and resistance whenever a dental tool came close to my mouth made it virtually impossible for the dentist to give me a check-up.  In the end my parents were told that I would have to go to a dentist that offered sedation for children.

Having the sedation at appointments was a bit of a game changer for me.  The happy gas they gave me made me drowsy and relaxed, which meant that the dentist could carry out her work without any fuss from me.  I stopped dreading the appointments for the rest of my childhood and through my teen years, and they just became routine.  I knew that once I was sedated I could handle it all.

The problem came though when I got to the end of my teen years and started work and no longer qualified for the free dentist appointments, and it was on my own back to find and pay for a dentist.  My solution to the problem was to just not bother going at all, and I kept that going until some of my teeth started to get very painful and sensitive.

At the age of 21 and living with constantly sensitive teeth I finally plucked up the courage to find myself a dentist.  It wasn’t much of a surprise to find that I had quite a few cavities that needed filling, and knowing that I would have to get them treated meant that some of my childhood anxiety crept in again.  I didn’t even actually think to ask for sedation, I just thought that was something they had given me as a child, but that I couldn’t have as an adult.  So I braved having the cavities filled and everything went fine, I didn’t freak out or feel like I couldn’t handle it.

So now that I had gone through dental treatment without sedation as an adult I was fine to just carry on seeing the dentist regularly right?  Err no, I decided to leave it another 4 and a half years till I was in massive amounts of pain from a gum infection before I went to the dentist again.  Although I had proved to myself that I could handle things, whenever I thought of the dentist all I remembered was my fears from my childhood, and that just kept holding me back from voluntarily getting check-ups.

When I plucked up the courage to get treated for the gum infection they found that I had another tooth that needed a filling, and so two weeks later I booked in to have that seen to.  Despite the fact that I hadn’t had any real work done to my teeth in over 4 years, I was surprisingly calm about the procedure on the day of the appointment.  That all changed though once the dental drill started up.  I was freaking out and flinching every time the dentist had to drill further into my tooth, and I felt terrified throughout the whole thing.  At the end of the appointment the dentist told me that I would probably need sedation next time I had something done as she had struggled to carry out the procedure because of my nerves.

I had already made my mind up though that I wasn’t going to the dentist again.

I made it 8 years without ever seeing a dentist.  There were lots of things that I wasn’t happy about with my mouth and teeth and that I would have liked looked at, but my fear of having dental work done on me was too great for me to contemplate facing it all.  I felt that I was getting away with not going to the dentist, but my biggest fear was something really bad happening to one of my teeth and then being forced into going to the dentist.  I managed to put the fear to the back of my mind and thought that if it hadn’t happened in 8 years then it probably wasn’t going to, until one Friday night in May this year I fractured my tooth.

I had been eating some chicken when suddenly I had felt a sharp pain at the base of my tooth, I wasn’t sure what I had done at first until I put my tongue against the tooth and felt a crack.  The tooth hadn’t seemed to hurt since I had caused the crack and it wasn’t sensitive to hot and cold or to being brushed so I decided to see how it was the next day.  Waking up in the morning I realised that I hadn’t felt any pain in the night, so I thought maybe it wasn’t as damaged as I had first assumed it to be.  I decided to test it by eating on it, and that was a big mistake.  The tooth felt disjointed and every time I bit down it felt like glass was scraping against my gums.  It was Saturday morning and I was due to go and stay in a hotel for the night for a family party in a couple of hours, this was my absolute worst nightmare about damaging a tooth coming true.

I phoned a dentist and as it was a bank holiday weekend the earliest they could see me was on Tuesday.  I was terrified that my tooth was suddenly going to fall out or to erupt in intense pain at any moment, but I had no choice but to go to the hotel for the party.  I got some extra strength pain killers from the chemist and just went on the trip hoping that things would hold out till Tuesday.  In the end I made it through the night away and the rest of the weekend without any pain in the tooth developing.

I woke up on the day of my dentist appointment absolutely terrified, although the tooth didn’t hurt, I was starting to feel some movement around the crack especially if my teeth knocked together in the night.  I kept thinking that maybe I was overreacting and that the crack would heal on its own, but it was uncomfortable and I knew that I could be leaving myself at risk of infection.  I just had to be brave and get it looked at.

By the time that the dentist called me into his room that day, I was a shaking and sweating nervous wreck.  The dentist struggled to look at the tooth and to take x rays as I was so jumpy and nervy, but in the end he managed to confirm that I had fractured the cusp of my back tooth.  To be honest I felt that the dentist I saw that day just found my nerves an annoyance, and he did nothing to put my mind at ease when he rattled off all of the things that might have to be done to fix the problem including removing the tooth and having an implant at the cost of £1000.  He finished the appointment by telling me that I could expect the fractured cusp to fall out any day, which sent me into a sheer state of panic.  I made the appointment to have the procedure done under sedation in two and a half weeks’ time, but I was already praying that the tooth would somehow fix itself.

The two week wait for the appointment was horrible.  I was too scared to go to sleep in case the bit of fractured tooth came out in the night, and when I did manage to drop off I slept fitfully worrying about how I would afford a £1000 dental bill.  Every time I ate the fracture got knocked and I could feel it flexing backwards and forwards, and towards the end it got pretty uncomfortable.  I was dreading the procedure, but a big part of me just wanted my mouth to feel normal again.

As I left my Dad in the waiting room on the day of the appointment, I acted as though I was being marched to my death.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that in a matter of minutes someone was going to be breaking a bit of my tooth off – On purpose!  As I sat down in the chair I was relieved to find that the dentist seemed a whole lot more understanding of my nerves and immediately put my mind at ease and reassured me.  I was pretty relieved when she told me that the root of the tooth was not damaged and that I would just need a simple filling to repair it.  The gas sedation began to kick in and I felt willing to let her do whatever needed to be done to get the tooth sorted out.  I got myself ready for unbearable and endless minutes of drilling and the pain of my tooth being broken, but in the end the old filling was drilled out in seconds and all I felt was a slight tug when the fractured bit of tooth was removed.  When the dentist told me that the work was finished, I couldn’t believe that after all my fretting I had got through it without any problems.  To top off the good feeling, the whole thing cost less than £100.

I know that going to the dentist isn’t a big deal to everyone, but to somebody who had put it off for eight years, getting part of my tooth removed and replaced was a big achievement and so I left the dentist office feeling pretty proud of myself that day.

A month later and the tooth that was repaired feels pretty great and there have been no further problems with it.  I am taking the time to appreciate how much better it feels than when it was fractured so that I don’t put off seeking treatment again in the future.  Now that I have survived having some work done at the dentist I want to stick to having regular check-ups so that my anxiety about going to the dentist doesn’t build up again and result in my leaving it another eight years before I make an appointment.  If you have anxiety about visiting a dentist and are putting it off out of fear, here are some tips from what helped me:

1.      If you are worried about seeing the dentist because you think your teeth are in really bad condition, then don’t be! They will have seen a lot worse over the course of their careers.

2.      If you are scared about the dentist using the drill on you during your appointment remember that the noise doesn’t equate to pain, and the drills are so state of the art these days that they perform their work in seconds.

3.      If you are a nervous patient then let them know when you make the appointment so that they can give you the best dentist for your needs to help put you at ease.

4.      Find a dentist that can offer you gas sedation if you are very nervous, this helped me massively and it wears off in minutes once the dental work is over.

5.      Don’t put off seeing a dentist because there is something wrong with your mouth that you think could be serious.  At the end of the day prevention is better than cure, I had some lumps in my mouth that I was worried about but they turned out to be nothing.  It’s better to find out if something is a problem and get it treated early on than to leave it until it can’t be cured.

6.      If you need to get some treatment done don’t spend the time before your appointment worrying about all the worst case scenarios that could happen to you.  That is what I did and it made my nerves a lot worse.  Just remember that the dentist you are seeing is fully qualified and you can trust them to carry out your treatment.

7.      Take a friend or family member to the appointment with you if you are feeling very nervous, whether they come in to the room with you and hold your hand or just sit in the waiting room, just having somebody else there can be a massive comfort.

8.      Once you manage to face going to the dentist, make a promise to yourself that you will get checked out regularly from that point onwards.  This is what I plan to do now that I have got over some of the hurdles of my dental anxiety.  Going regularly will help you to stay on top of your nerves and will reduce the chances of you needing major dental work in the future.

Find youself an anxiety buddy!

Everybody that suffers with anxiety has those days where you have something big planned but anxiety and panic are taking you over, and it all just seems like too much to deal with.

Of course you want to stick to your plans and go on that day out, or to that party, or just to meet up with friends, but a thousand fears are going through your mind and holding you back. 

In your anxious state of mind the last thing that you would want would be for anybody that you are with to find out how you are feeling and to know that anxiety is getting the better of you that day.  It seems easier just to cancel your plans than to worry about making a fool of yourself in front of people.

Sound familiar?

The one thing that helped me to finally deal with still facing up to social plans on days when I felt particularly anxious was to find myself an anxiety buddy.

My anxiety buddy is my sister, and I kind of ended up recruiting her by accident, but it has all worked out pretty well for us. 

One weekend we had a cousin staying with us and we were all due to go out for a meal.  All day I could feel that I was starting to get a cold, and the onset of a sore throat and temperature were starting to make me feel run down and apprehensive.  Most of my panic and anxiety is related to feeling unwell as I first developed anxiety and depression as a side effect of glandular fever, so any time I feel my throat start to swell or I know I am getting ill I start to panic about being away from the house.

At the restaurant as my throat got increasingly sore and I began to get those familiar flu type shivers, I was beginning to majorly freak out and then I eventually went into a full on panic attack.  I just wanted to run out of the restaurant, but at the same time I desperately didn’t want anybody else at the table to know that I was struggling or feeling anxious. 

In the end I couldn’t take it anymore and I quietly asked my sister to come to the bathroom with me, and as soon as we got in there I burst in to tears and told her that I was having a panic attack.  She calmed me down and reassured me that she would look out for me for the rest of the evening and would help me if I had any further attacks.

What I noticed was that the panic instantly eased off as soon as I told somebody what I was experiencing.  Trying to hold it down and not show my weakness to anybody was giving the panic all the more power to take over my body.  I was fine for the rest of the evening knowing that somebody else at the table knew how I was feeling and that I could turn to them for help if I needed to.

From that point onwards my sister has firmly been my anxiety buddy, and I am hers too.  If ever we are going somewhere and I am feeling anxious about it, I will usually call her beforehand and tell her how I am feeling so that I know I have a support system in place should I need it.  My sister does the same with me too, on days when she is feeling the fear she will let me know it’s a bit of an anxious day for her, and I will do my very best to look out for her and help her.

If fear of getting panicky in front of people is holding you back from social plans, it might be worth trying to recruit an anxiety buddy too.  Sometimes it can take a while to find the right person, it has to be somebody that can be compassionate an understanding of your needs, but who at the same time can make sure that you don’t run away from situations and that you push yourself to face your fears knowing that support is there if you need it.

A good way to find a potential anxiety buddy is to try mentioning your fears in front of people and seeing how they react.  If when you mention that you sometimes get panicky to somebody, and they say back to you that they get anxiety too, then they could be the perfect anxiety buddy for you and you could make a deal that you will tell each other when you are struggling.  Sometimes other people are feeling the exact same way as you, and once you open up about your anxiety they feel that they can do the same too.

It might take a while and a bit of trial and error to find the right anxiety buddy, but once you have that support system you will find that panic and anxiety start losing their power to ruin your social life!

What I read last week: Basically by Gemma Collins

I am a massive fan of The only way is Essex, and Gemma Collins is by far my favourite character.  I think the show would be pretty boring without her.  So after receiving Gemma’s autobiography as a Christmas present a couple of years ago (too many books, too little time!) I finally set about reading it last week. 

I have to say that to me the book made for a very interesting read, as Gemma takes us through her years growing up in Essex and attending drama school classes whenever she could in her bid to achieve stardom.  As I am the same age as Gemma I enjoyed all of the little mentions of things from the 80’s and 90’s in the book like Take That, Rimmel make up, Naf Naf jackets, and Patrick Cox Shoes!

It is fair to say that Gemma has been through her fair share of heartache with relationships, including the devastating loss of a baby, but like most of us she has managed to come out the other side of it all stronger and wiser.

Gemma should be proud of everything that she has achieved since joining TOWIE with her shop and clothing line, and I know that one day she will find that Tony Soprano style guy that she is looking for!

If you are a TOWIE fan then definitely check this book out!

How I deal with panic and anxiety during the summer months and hay fever season

I think most people that suffer with anxiety and panic dread summertime and hay fever season, even if they love the sunshine and long daylight hours.  I know I feel that way about it every year, even though I consider myself pretty well recovered these days.

There was a time in the early years of my journey with anxiety that it seemed like I was always going through the worst of it in the height of summer, and that was far from easy to deal with.  In 2010 I first started to get panic attacks and periods of anxiety right at the start of summer, and then in the summer months of 2011 I suffered my nervous breakdown and had to endure some of the worst days of anxiety I have ever been through in a scorching hot July, while in 2012 I was trying to recover from agoraphobia and found myself attempting to get back to work in the summer months, which proved to be a huge challenge that was made even harder by long hot days in the city.

When you suffer from panic attacks the big thing that can affect you is that you suddenly get very hot and bothered, and you can feel as though there is no air and that you can’t breathe.  This can be made incredibly difficult to deal with when its already extremely warm outside and we are having to exert ourselves in that heat.  Just the feeling that we are getting too hot can make us think that we are on the verge of a panic attack, and that’s when the fear sets in.

I am one of many hay fever sufferers and I also find that the symptoms that come with it of congestion, blocked ears and a fuzzy head also trigger my anxiety a lot.  I think it is that feeling of being spaced out and not quite with it, along with the slight difficulty in breathing of congestion that reminds me of a panic attack, and that’s when I start to get anxious.

My hay fever is particularly bad today as the pollen counts are very high, but I forced myself outside despite feeling very congested.  As I queued up in a shop I found myself on the verge of a panic as I started feeling very unwell from the hay fever, but I forced myself to stand there and not to give in to the feelings.

I think the thing that has helped me most to deal with anxiety during the warm months is to kind of explain the feelings to myself when they are getting too much, or when I feel like I am on the verge of panicking.  If it is a very warm day and I feel myself overheating and I sense anxiety creeping in as my temperature goes up, I will tell myself that I am getting hot because it is a warm summers day and not because I am about to have a panic attack.  On the days that I find myself struggling to walk around the supermarket without getting dizzy because I am so congested with hay fever, I remind myself that I am a bit unsteady because my ears are blocked with congestion and not because I am about to pass out with anxiety.  I Just find that giving a bit of a rational explanation to how I am feeling stops the anxious part of my mind from building things up into worse scenarios than what is actually happening.

The summer months have definitely been the biggest hurdle to overcome during my journey with anxiety, but I know that every year I get a little bit better at dealing with it and I find myself hiding away from it all a lot less.  I am still hoping they find that cure for hay fever though!