My First Dental Experience…

When I was young, I hated the dentist. Even before I had any reason to, it scared me as much as anything I could think of. I cannot remember the first time it occurred to me, that I was scared of the dentist, it might have been a friend, or something I saw on television, or just the idea of letting a stranger poke around in my mouth. Whatever it was, it didn’t bode well for my first experience at the dentist office.

Where I grew up there was a travelling dental bus, not a full fledged clinic. The two communities it served were rural and too far away to warrant a home base. And so there was the bus, and one doctor who moved between them. The doctor was good at his job, but he was a single dentist servicing patients of all ages and he wasn’t ready for a six year old who had serious dental anxiety. (more…)