A Traumatic Treatment I

It all began some time in last November when I felt a pain in my last upper tooth when I took a sip of the free cuppa at Baby's dentist's.

After seeing Baby's good experiences for tooth extraction and cleaning with the dentist and hearing of a friend's account of how she could have dinner at Soup Restaurant the next day after her two wisdom teeth extraction at her dentist's, I decided to visit Baby's dentist to check if I had tooth decay, and hopefully it would be dealt with with some filling.

The x-ray showed that I did not have tooth decay. However, as I have not visited a dentist ever since I left secondary school, I had developed gum disease. It simply means bacteria and germs are hiding in the gums, and the dentist recommended gum disease treatment for my condition.

She explained that each time, only half of the mouth would be treated as it would take an hour, and it would cost $1200 w/o GST for each treatment using laser.

She assured me that it would not be painful and the only pain I would experience would be the one from the anaesthesia injection, which would be over within a few seconds.

Armed with all the good online reviews of the dentist, the assurance of the ease of the treatment, I braved myself for the appointment a month later.

I had a classmate who went for a double-eyelid surgery when she was 18. She said she didn't want to spend too much time to consider about whether she should have the surgery as we tend to stick to the safe side and not have the surgery.

This episode has quite an impact on my life after that as I would often tell myself,"Just do it lah!" if I am offered something supposedly beneficial for me but requires me to go through some inconveniences or pain.

So, on the very morning when I was to go for the treatment, I stood at my wardrobe, hesitated for some moments,"Or maybe I don't go lah? But the dentist said I would lose my teeth if I don't do it. So go lah?"

and in the end, I still decided to go.

The treatment started with not one, or two, or five injections. It was between ten to twelve anaesthesia injections on my upper gum!

The dentist had applied numbing gel prior to the injections, so although some jabs were painful, none was excruciating or eternal.

I went on to have the treatment which required me to swallow pockets of water that the assistant jetted into my mouth throughout the remaining 45 minutes.

After the treatment, the dentist briefed me on how to brush my gums and said that I could eat after four hours.

All seemed good and dandy.

I left the dentist's not knowing what trauma awaited me.