#I've had a bad day in terms of trauma resurfacing and then my teeth started hurting

[thethingything]

I'm pretty sure our teeth are getting more painful and I don't know what to do about it. I'd have gone for another appointment by now if it wasn't for what happened back in January. sedation freaks us out too much to be a viable option for getting treatment without panicking, but getting treatment while not sedated doesn't feel safe with the way the flashbacks from this tend to be (they usually involve the same movements from at the time, so lurching forward and putting my hands up in front of my face) so I feel like I'd be risking getting injured more.

articles online recommend booking appointments for consultations where they don't do anything as a way to expose yourself to being in the dentist's office and yeah that might work but I don't think we have the energy to keep going to appointments where we don't get treatment.

there's also a lot of stuff that's like "you probably had a bad experience as a kid and it wasn't as bad as you remember it being" or "it's very unlikely you'll go through anything similar again" when like, the last two appointments both fucked me up and we've had similarly distressing ones in the past and had dentist related PTSD symptoms for years, and I hate that everything seems to use "it's so unlikely that you'd go through this more than once" as reassurance.

I'm so fucking tired. I've had to deal with this shit and I've had to deal with other medical trauma because apparently medical professionals can't seem to grasp that you actually need to fucking listen to patients and accommodate their fucking needs. and now I have to deal with all the consequences while they get to just keep doing the same shit with no repercussions.

but anyway, one of my teeth still has a huge cavity, several other teeth feel weird and keep getting painful in a way that feels like they've got cracks in them or something. some of these teeth have had 3 or 4 fillings in them by now and at this point I'm not sure if it's our teeth being especially weak or the dentists doing a particularly bad job or both, given how much more painful some of them got after having fillings. I don't know what to do with any of this