Who's afraid of the big bad Dentist ??

I am a grown woman and I am afraid of the dentist. I am not quite at the level of needing Valium to get me in the door but I am not far off. This would probably be reasonably okay if it was not for the fact that my teeth aren't exactly in fantastic shape. I have several fillings and one or two gaps, all several years old because I am not exactly a frequent flyer at the dentists office. I was also informed several years ago that I grind my teeth in my sleep and I started to do something about it but truth be told I let it slide and I can't say my teeth have gotten any better from the doing nothing. Usually I will find myself in a dentists office only when I am in a great deal of pain because the combination of a lecture on the state of my teeth, a certain degree of pain and then a bill that be nearly more upsetting than the procedure isn't exactly enticing.

A few weeks back I started to get some pain in a tooth, one of the back teeth and I ignored it, like any adult would do. The pain wasn't too bad, more of a niggle really. The tooth had eroded and food was occasionally getting trapped in the gap so I knew the tooth was a goner. Occasionally the pain would get quite bad and I'd pop a painkiller while adopting a wait and see approach. If you are not familiar with it then its pretty similar to ignoring a problem and hoping it goes away approach. Funnily enough it didn't go away, in fact it got worse and I reached the point where I was taking pain killers just to sleep. By last Friday I had acknowledged I'd need to make a dentist appointment but I had to wait until after the weekend to actually have time to get myself in there. So I got through the weekend with painkillers and clove oil and the vague hope that my tooth would get better before Monday.

Spoiler alert, it didn't. So this morning I made an appointment and then spent the rest of the day trying not to think about it. So this afternoon I found myself sitting in a dentist chair feeling a little shaky as I lay back with my paper bib and goggles. I knew the dentist would not be a happy man once he looked at my teeth but perhaps if they could find a way to make dental appointments a bit less traumatic then I would have gotten in sooner. His first suggestion was that I get a root canal to save the tooth. For that he would need to refer me on. I was concerned that might work out extortionately expensive and he reassured me it was only €700. That was my decision made as an extraction is €85 so it was bye bye tooth. Next came the part I find least pleasant. When the tools come out and they poke and prod and stick needles in your gums. I was given so much numbing agent that I still can't feel my ear an hour later. They had to inject me twice and then give me something else because it really hurt when he went to pull the tooth and you wonder why its taken me this long to get back into the dentists. I took the injections and other prodding and pulling with eyes squeezed shut because its a lot less scary when you don't see needles and the like coming towards your mouth. By the end of the procedure I was shaking like a leaf and maybe drooling a little. I have been given a bandage to bite down on but my face is so numb I might be just biting my lip without knowing. 
All of that plus €500 worth of follow up treatments needed. I haven't made the appointment for the next visit yet but I swear its on the to do list and until then I will be reading the poem 'I wish I'd looked after my teeth' as a helpful reminder.