The dentist 09/03/2011

After breaking a tooth last Thursday, my partner P. finally got hold on the dentist on Friday. Just for financial reasons I wanted to go to this particular dentist, knowing by experience that he delivers good work for a fair price. The dentist had room for me on Tuesday, so I accepted the appointment and ate 5 days on one side of my mouth to avoid damaging more.

All days while waiting for my appointment, when the dentists was popping up in my mind, I felt calm. Normally, even for a check up, I had a lot of anxiety. Especially while waiting in the waiting room it was almost unbearable. Now while entering the waiting room I was just entering a waiting room. There was nobody in the waiting room except us and one patient inside the surgery room.

I asked P. to come along in case the dentist was going to ask me things I wouldn’t understand or in case I wasn’t able to explain. Also my daughter A. came along, just for the fun, she likes these things.

The patient who was in before us was ready to leave and the dentist said: “give me a second to clean up”, within that moment between thinking I’m going in but I actually wasn’t and the real going in, I felt a little bit of anxiety. This anxiety faded away once I was inside the surgery room and saw his familiar face. It had all to do with trust as I wrote about before.

I told him what happend and I was actually capable of doing so, before he had a look. He wasn’t alarmed about what he saw, he was more surprised to see my old amalgam filling. He explained to me that he was going to drill out the old filling and put some medication inside the hole and close it again with a paste. This was a temporary solution to avoid infection and within 10 days he will take out the paste and fill the hole with white composite filling and restore the piece that broke off.

While he was drilling I didn’t feel any anxiety for the amount of pain he would let me go through. No anxiety of not trusting him. Which made me see how much this trusting is of the mind. I trust people with whom I had good experiences and memories before and do not trust people who I had bad experiences and memories with before. So I was never ever in the moment while being at the dentists. While being in the moment for most of the time I saw that it was just drilling out a filling and through breathing I stayed in the moment and took it for what it was. Quite a new experience.

The first hour it felt as if he had put chewing gum into my tooth, but it hardend very quickly. I was glad I had gone to let it fix and not waited out of saving money till the point that it would have become even worse. I told P. that next time I would go all by myself, it wasn’t hard to find at all. It’s a 20 minute drive to a town in our area. That’s also a point of anxiety for me to drive somewhere new and keeping track of where I am.

I believe that I do not have a sense of direction, this belief is based on all the memories I gathered throughout my life. All those memories have been confirming the previous memories and that’s how I held this anxiety in position. I completely lose it when I see within my mind how to drive and all of a sudden there is this missing part and at the same time I can see how to drive next to the blanco part on my mind map. Or reality is inconsistant with the picture of the map in my mind. I’ll simply freak out and imagine to never come home again. Also this experience is so unnecessary, just slowing down and preparing myself so I know what I’m doing would be enough.

It’s time to deal with the past, slow down and seeing the things for what they are without any energetic attachments.

Smile… 04/03/2011

After finishing my lunch today it felt as if there was something sticking in between my teeth. When I tried to release the piece of food, as I thought, I found myself with a little piece of tooth in my hand. I quickly estimated the situation and felt with my tongue what had gone wrong inside my mouth. I hadn’t chewed on a hard piece of food or something like that. I found out that it was indeed a piece of tooth and by losing this piece my dental filling was now in the open and felt like a sharp cutting edge. This edge has by now damaged the inside of my cheek and it also hurts a little bit.

Normally when there is something wrong with my body I freak out. This time I was calm and even suggested my partner P. that we might need to see a dentist. Me suggeting to go to a dentists ! The freaking out part is now I look at it more closely more present when I do not know what it is I matter. Then my mind fits all kind of stored medical information unto the symptoms I have and starts filling in all types of diseases. One worse then the other and I’m so to speak are arranging my own funeral.

Now it was easy, my tooth broke and I need to see a dentist. So no mind fucks there, all clear. Common sense, check. The equality equation, check. Okay tomorrow I will make an appointment with a dentist we already know. Well that’s it.

But of course that wasn’t it. Though I didn’t freak out by the word dentist as in fear for pain or fear for not being in control in my case. The word dentist did trigger a whole different area, money. When I walked the whole event another time when slowing down, I noticed that already last week I felt a strange bubble on top of my tooth. I examined it thoroughly with my tongue and kind of hoped that it was nothing serious and never deliberately payed attention to it till today. I hoped it went away out of the fear that it could be something expensive, since dental costs are not covered by health insurance here in Italy, and that shows, most people have really bad teeth. So now I found myself with a piece of tooth in my hand and there was indeed a reaction that took hold of me.

Still in Holland I didn’t trust dentists, at least the one’s I had experienced till then. My first dentist when drilling my first tooth hole when I was 8 years old, asked me to squeeze his hand if it was too painful and then he would stop for a moment. I squeezed till I dropped, but the man never stopped. Later in life I experienced how dentists tried to make more money out of me. Since I never had anything wrong with my teeth while doing check ups, they found other ways to make money out of me like x-rays, appointments with a dental hygienist etc.

Since we know this dentist here in Italy personally, there is always the possibility to ask if I can pay in terms if it is too expensive to pay in one time. I have seen him in action and I know he isn’t a money squeezer. I have no idea what the restoring of a tooth will cost and if it is a matter of restoring, so I will not go there and fantasize about it. Tomorrow I will hear more.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit my medical care by the amount of money I have.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will not have enough money to pay the dentist.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore my body out of the fear of not having enough money.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust dentists due to primair experiences and memories .