Dental Fear - now 50% less amusing

I managed to put it off as long as possible, but today we bit the bullet and actually showed up for our dental appointment. I only managed to postpone it twice.

It helps that the dentist is young, male and slightly flirtatious (even during the throes of a root canal) but I can't imagine how he keeps it up even when he is rooting around in my mouth for the remains of my cavity and fishing out tiny little strands of dead nerves from my back teeth. In another life, he would be a porn star, capable of remaining in character regardless of everything that is happening around him. I suspect he would behave exactly the same way even if he was being chased through the forest by a rabid tiger. But anyway.

So we discovered today (in possibly the worst possible way imaginable) that some of us are really quite resistant to local anaesthetics. One hour into the treatment, I had been the undelighted recipient of 3 rounds of anaesthetic injections and still I could feel pain in my tooth. And by pain, I mean the pain that comes from drilling without an anaesthetic. Nothing is more depressing than being terrified of injections, making yourself sit through 3 rounds of injections because you are even more terrified of pain, and then having to endure the pain anyway. All this in the midst of the sound of non-stop cheering from the plasma TV embedded in the ceiling (some black guy was given the world's worst job and everyone else was happy and relieved).

In summary, we spent 1 hour getting injected like some kind of science experiment and then only 20 minutes on the treatment. Sigh. At some point, another dentist was called in to provide a second opinion. In the words of my dentist to the other dentist (and this is VERBATIM), "I have given her enough anaesthetic to numb an elephant and she still feels pain." I suspect I received less anaesthetic than this when I delivered The Son. The delivery also took less time. WHY WHY WHY!! *waves fists ineffectually at the ceiling*