If My Mother Read This Blog, I'm Sure She'd be Telling Me, "I told you so"

I haven't been to see a dentist in five years.  Yes, I know that this is four and a half years more than you should wait, but for as long as I can remember back, I've always had this fear- and I'm talking about the kind that grips you and makes it almost as unbearable to think about going as the actual act of physically going.  It stems back to childhood (doesn't everything???) when I had a VERY insensitive dentist- make that several- who I swear got off on pulling as many teeth as they could get away with.  Or filling every square inch of tooth, JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD.  I'll never forget one memoriable Easter when I had seven baby teeth pulled from my head just a couple days beforehand, which meant NO CHOCOLATE for me.  That's just a plain cruel and insensitive act to do to a child.  Almost ranking up there next to locking them in closets.  Or telling them that Santa and the Easter Bunny don't exist. 

Since I went back to work fulltime, I became elligible for dental insurance again.  Up until that, we've always taken the boys every six months religiously, but not ourselves (because who wants to scrape together $200 for THAT when you can spend it in such more fulfilling ways like, say, a Wii).  We've used the new insurance for the boys' appointments, but hadn't mustered the courage to go to the dentist ourselves yet... until now.  This morning I had my first appointment in five years.  An appointment that I tried VERY hard to not fixate on until the minute I was opening the door to the office and then the panic started setting in.

I managed to make it through the appointment relatively unscathed.  Even when they got to the part when they told me that I was going to need a "deep cleaning", since I haven't been in for so long.  I won't go into the gorey details of it all, but apparently my face must have told them enough, because when discussing the options, they mentioned that they were going to not just numb me, but would also have the lovely, lovely gas available to "help me relax" during the procedure.  Yes, I am THAT big of a baby.  And yes, I told them that sounded fabulous.  And that I'd probably need the whole day off to recover afterwards.

Unfortunately, with all the time I took off while moving and then again will be taking off at the end of June for our vacation, I really don't know when/ how I'm going to muster up the time off for two appointments (because apparently they do each side in a separate appointment).  I didn't let them know this, naturally, but it's probably going to be July or August before I can schedule my torture sessions.  Hey, what's two or three more months when it's already been five years, right?