I had a great dentist 10 years ago who understood this and dealt with it. He was patient enough to wait for me to actually get numb before working on me. He also looked over my X rays and did some experiments to determine that the nerve usually targeted with novocain actually went in a different location to numb me effectively with a single shot. But after I moved away from that area, I couldn’t find anyone who would take me seriously, so I stopped going in for dental treatments.
I decided to get over this difficulty when I experienced tooth pain about a year ago. A friend of my wife recommended a dentist to check my teeth. He still ended up referring me to a San Francisco dentist, who he said specializes in cases similar to mine, after the trials with novocain injection.
I did not have any problem getting comfortable with this dental office because it was one of the few who gives general anesthesia during dental work. The friendly staff asked me to answer some survey about the possible items with which I may have an issue. One section even described my taking off instinct. The survey asked if I cancel dental appointments continually and I said yes.
I had to be under general anesthesia to get every needed procedure done once and for all. Most of the patients will not afford an every visit general anesthesia. The procedures do cost more than usual because I have to pay $1,000 dollars above the procedural cost because of the anesthesia. For my case that time, they did deep cleaning and they also prepped me on the other side of my mouth to do a crown procedure. The caried surface of one of my teeth has been shaven and one more tooth was prepped for root canal.
I have lost track of the actual duration of the procedure. The single appointment for all the procedures I underwent is not possible if not for the general anesthesia. Just choose between a day of appointment but with general anesthesia or having local anesthesia but with four separate appointments.
The general anesthesia did not make me ill but it did make me sleep the whole day. For three days, my wife was feeling ill after her four wisdom teeth were cut out in a single procedure under general anesthesia. The sedation is not part of my insurance coverage but all the other aspect of the workup was pain and it reached approximately $1,000. Another dentist, however, was needed for one tooth for root canal surgery under sedation and this means for him an additional $1200.
Thus, I maxed out my insurance that year so easily. The moment my mouth gets that messed up again, I will do the same thing. It is unimaginable how I could come out alive from those procedures just by going under local anesthesia and I would have probably not have gone to the dental office in the first place. Now that the big time work is done, I just need to return to the needle less procedures such as teeth cleaning. However, I have not gotten over by dread of dental procedures.
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