Oh boyTW:panic attacks

I feel this important to speak about with mental health. It’s embarrassing for me to discuss. Please bare through it.

Do you know why kindness and empathy matter? Because a lack of it, has caused a lifetime of nightmares.

I had a town full of bad dentists growing up, rude, evil, angry men.

They refused to believe I wasn’t numb. Or deal with any of it. One dentist yelled at the dental assistant that if I needed it that bad then she can do it otherwise he is done. She in anger shoved the needle through my cheek. The dentist even told my mother to get her crying child out of the chair.

Nothing will stop it.

Flash forward forty years later and the kindness and empathy shown to me at the dentist office as an extraction fails to come out and I start into a full blown panic attack.

I know it’s coming. I can’t stop it. I’m trying to breathe. My entire head starts literally pouring dripping in sweat. It even caught the dentist off guard,

My entire body is now sweating it can be seen in my shirt and I can’t breathe. They stop. My attack has already crested and I’m stuck riding the whole thing out. As I’m now LAYING IN A BALL in child pose on my hands and knees on the floor not sure if I’m going to vomit, scream, cry, pass out.

You need to understand this part. It’s literally my bodies response and how it trained itself through that trauma as a kid. Im a passenger, I can’t stop the emotions. It’s like when a child is crying and the parent says “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”. Don’t ever say that. Because if my own mom said that my 47 yo 🍑 I still wouldn’t.

The dentist

One dental assistant grabbed a fan out of the cabinet to cool me down. Another one got me a blanket to rest my forehead on instead of floor. One rubbed my shoulders. It actually made me want to cry more. I apologized. They told me to stop apologizing, it’s fine. I laid there and listened to some music on my earbuds.

As the attack wound down I got back in the chair. The dentist she rubbed my shoulders. An assistant put an ice pack on my head.

It still took a long time (100 minutes in that room) to get the tooth out. It had to be broken up and dug out. Took two dentists to figure it out.

Think I figured out my favorite dentist office in Florida

Yours Forever Grateful