To hell the Dentist's chair.
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Shipmate
in Hell
I don't mind going to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned or filled, but sitting in that chair is hell. It makes the small of my back hurt, as well as my neck, when stretched back. I have asked him not to quickly raise the chair when I am done, as it can cause my back to pop and hurt even more. He said he can not raise it slowly, as it is electric and does its own thing. I asked him not to raise it and to let me climb out myself, not easy, but I did it. I need to find an elderly dentist with a nice old hand pump and a self-adjusting chair. I am guessing that they are all dead.
Comments
For big time dental work I couple sedation ( a couple of sedatives prescribed to me to be taken beforehand) with the easier dental injections.
For the hygienists, I'm going to explore a new apparently less awful procedure and if that doesn't work I'll have to look at getting a prescription to endure that.
I suggest taking sensory discomfort seriously (and change dentist if they won't) - it can be just as bad as pain in some ways.
And going to the opposite end, as it were, I didn't feel the need of any of the options offered during a colonoscopy.
I did when they try and take x-rays of my back teeth. I found by raising one leg and pinching myself I can get through it.
That's bizarre. I swill and spit at the dentist. He/she (dentist/hygienist) wear masks I think but the practice has dropped stuff like scanning for symptoms and insisting on hand hygiene.
Rinse and spit into the wee sink is still a thing at the dentist I go to.
The hygienist is a torturer! I have to see her every three months. (Very old implants which need care and attention)
I never have the hygienist. They charge £85 for the privilege at my clinic and I think this must be private - you used to be able to get your teeth cleaned and all that on the NHS.
I get this in the night sometimes if I sleep on my back, and it's a reason why it's quite scary for me that the dental practice I go to doesn't let us spit any more. Saliva can go down into your airway (and especially if you have EDS, which I do, but I wonder if local anaesthesia also has an affect, such as if you can't feel what your throat is doing). I stay quite alert to it at the dentist and sit up quickly if I need to. You can arrange to make a hand signal if you need to sit up.
You can ask the dentist not to recline the chair fully though - that will reduce the likelihood of it happening again. Mine is also NHS, and they don't recline it fully for me. They have different levels of reclining, because of different people having different health conditions.
I think there's some kind of H&S reason around repetitive strain injury why they are meant to use that position but I don't see why it can't be relaxed on occasion when needed.
This is why I'm looking for a new dentist.
Ours don't use numbing gel these days. They did when I first started going there but now it's back to good old injections with a foot-long syringe that enters your gums, passes through your face and neck and out the other side. Or so it feels.
The one good thing about that is that it works more quickly than it used to. I remember the days of being sent back to sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes while you waited for the numbness to kick in and they tackled some other poor soul meanwhile.
[From fineline:]
I get this in the night sometimes if I sleep on my back... [/]
Same during times of stress. We are allowed to spit in the clinic - I still remember an incident years ago of being flustered enough to spit on the wrong side of the chair and it all ending up on the floor. I wonder if anyone has any happy memories of dental visits!
In my experience, even with an access dentist, they don't really prioritise sensory stuff - as in, I explain that if I can't spit, the stuff goes into my throat and I hate the feeling, but they still say I can't spit. Possibly if I said about the choking thing, they might - it never occurred to me to say it. I'm not good at processing and expressing my needs on the spot. But the reason they say I don't need to have the chair fully reclined is because of my POTS - they don't want me to potentially collapse or faint when I stand up. I guess it's a risk assessment thing - that could result in a serious injury if I hit my head. They prioritise minimising risk of injury over sensory experience.
@Pomona - I didn't realise for ages until I was in EDS online groups and people were talking about it. A lot of EDS stuff I didn't realise until the POTS doctor was asking me all sorts of questions and testing various things. Another thing is if you write lightly on you arm with your fingernail, it comes up raised and red after a few minutes. It's called dermatographia.
It didn’t occur to me that choking on your own saliva was an EDS feature; it’s happened all my life, mainly when I sleep on my back or feel nervous in a social situation.
My dentist knows that I can't open my mouth too wide without my jaw suffering.
I don’t have the saliva problem, but i do have the anesthesia problem and endless allergies, which results in phlegm running down my throat, esp. in early autumn.
Some people made their Ship career out of massively insulting everyone. I say get it out and be damned!
I suspect I may know the theory, as I have a theory too, and it's probably the same. Along the lines of EDS and neurodivergence being often linked, and neurodivergent people often finding online interaction easier than in person?
That certainly resonates with me!
Yup, and even if not technically not neurospicy, text based asynchronous internet lets people different in anyway be eccentric in peace. I have no diagnosis, but I was getting eccentric written into my school reports at the age of 11.
In writing, there are still layers, but from a sensory perspective, it's visual only (well, you could include the touch of the keypad, but you control that - it's not going to jump out and touch you) and you can process and respond in your own time.
Well, I deliberately hadn't posted my theory until Doublethink mentioned a theory and people wanted to hear it, because I didn't know how it would be taken, particularly as not everyone with EDS will be neurodivergent, and some may be, but haven't considered it, or don't want to consider it. And there was a time in the not-too-distant past when being autistic was something scorned, and even used as an insult on the Ship to mock people with poor/unusual social skills, and some people might still have that attitude, and not want to be associated with it.
By the way, my previous post was in response to Aravis. I hadn't seen Doublethink's reply until now. I was still wondering if her theory was the same as mine! But yes, exactly, the whole eccentric thing - how it's seen from the outside. The idea that you're weird - it's not always seen in a positive way, though these days neurodivergence has become more accepted, something to be embraced.
One funny incident happened at A&E. She'd fallen awkwardly off our settee, hurt her left knee and couldn't weight-bear. I took her to the children's A&E and the doctor examined her right knee and confirmed that she'd damaged it. I told him he was looking at the wrong knee! He was very interested, and called up a couple of students to see it. In the midst of this, one doctor asked me "Are you a circus family?"
I'm not ND, although my son begs to differ on that.
All* the young'uns are saying that these days, along with 'the 'tism' for autism - 'got a touch of the 'tism!' (I don't like them for myself, but happy for people to call themselves what they like.)
*I'm talking in hyperbole. Not literally all young people, and not just young people. I mean it's a popular expression.