Having spent the best part of four weeks carefully avoiding the right side of my mouth I am relieved to be sliding down into the horizontal of the dentist’s chair.
It wasn’t always like this.
As a child, I was terrified of the dentist or, more specifically, Mrs. Brown who, unlike her namesake from the unfathomably popular BBC sitcom, was a horror of a woman who seemed to find nothing more pleasurable than traumatising young children with laughing gas.
“Count to ten,” she’d say without a hint of empathy as she slipped the rubber mask over my face.
To this day I can bring to mind the shiny brass bell on the front door, the smell of disinfectant and fear as you walked in, and the Barnados collection box on the small table piled with well-thumbed home improvement magazines.
In “Mans Search For Meaning” Victor Frankl wrote,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Essentially he is pointing out that pain and suffering are not necessarily connected.
He’s right, although Mrs. Brown tried her best to make them synonymous.
These days my dentist is a lovely lady genuinely concerned at my discomfort and handy with a drill.
Having diagnosed a cracked molar with trouble that may have found its way to the nerve I felt anxious as the drill bit whirred into action but it was a more benign anxiety that that caused by the original unknown pain.
In a question recently from a client in a toxic relationship, he stated that the impending breakup was causing relief and fear in equal measure. It reminded me of my teeth.
The pain experienced from the untreated cracked tooth was so much worse because I had no idea when and if it would break entirely leaving heaven knows what exposed.
The pain from having no idea “what next?” is a heavy burden.
But after what appears to have been an ill-fated attempt to avoid root canal treatment I have found a more peaceful discomfort.
I have no fear of “what next?” I know what’s happening, and as much pain as that might involve at least it has an end in sight
For my client who has no idea whether to hang on or bail out, it is the fear of the unknown which keeps him standing in the familiar pain.
“If we have to take the nerve out it probably will be painful, even with the anaesthetic. I just want to warn you.”
“That’s OK. I’ll cope.”
I imagine I will too because significant pain for a limited period is always better than a familiar background pain that goes on forever.
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