I still remember my first dental experience from when I was about six years old. The dentist was working on my cavities without giving me a single shot to numb my mouth so I would not feel pain. Sometimes this can be done without any complications if a cavity is small enough. However, using this technique on a small child is rather appalling, especially if it is the child's first dental appointment.  This experience in which my mouth was not numbed occurred more than once over the next few years. Because of this particular trauma, my refusal to go to the dentist made these particular appointments an all-day affair. When I got to the dental office, I began to cry and hung onto the door knob so I would not be dragged into the room. Once I was finally seated in the dental chair, I would not open my mouth and refused to let my dentist work on my teeth. When my dentist had enough of me, I would be referred to a kid specialist in a university dental clinic for my treatment.



To this very day, every time I go to receive dental treatment, I still feel  nervous and wonder if the traumatic experiences of my childhood will occur once again. My first root canal experience did not go very well. I started having a severe toothache the night before my first root canal and I could not sleep all night long. The next day I went to see my root canal teacher at my dental school, but my mouth was not  numb enough to get treated because my tooth was extremely inflamed. I had to bite the bullet through the pain as I experienced this horrible event. In the last twenty years root canal treatment has improved immensely and can be done with very minimal discomfort. Even injections cause very little pain. A person's whole dental experience can be a very positive one. Patients do not have to experience what I had to go through over the years. Despite my bad experiences with root canals in the past, the last root canal  that I experienced went very smoothly.

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Dr. Min