Yellow spaghetti dental clinic

And why I can’t push myself into a dentist’s chair right now

From the website of one dental clinic in Kyiv

For the last two days, I’ve been scheduling and canceling appointments with dentists at several private clinics. I have both upper and lower teeth in tiny cavities — it’s not a dramatic picture, but I still don’t want that to progress further, and I know how fast it can progress. I know my teeth have to be fixed, but right now pushing myself into a dentist’s chair feels like an act of violence against myself.

I wouldn’t be able to count how many visits to dentists I made throughout my life, especially as a child — several dozens for sure. Many of them were painful and unpleasant. There was this one time when my mother had to hold me forcefully while the dentist bored my tooth through excruciating pain and counted down from thirty to zero before she stopped. There were times when I left a dental office with an open tooth and untreated cavity because I couldn’t tolerate the pain anymore. I, of course, always felt guilty and I, of course, was expected to feel that way — the tooth decay will progress and it will be your fault when it gets worse so you should suck it up. Sometimes I could suck it up, but sometimes I just simply couldn’t.

Today I’m not a child anymore — age wise at least — but it seems I feel even more scared than before. The…