Leigh H
It’s, I don’t know, maybe 15 years all told, and I had a horrific fear of dentists, and I started coming here because I really needed some work done, and they were really great with working with my fears and phobias and relaxing me and making me feel okay about it, so I turned into someone who came consistently to the dentist instead of avoiding it for a long time. I had a dentist as a child who didn’t think kids really felt pain, so I have a mouth full of cavities that I had filled without Novocaine. It just didn’t even occur to me that you could go to the dentist and not be tortured, basically.
I didn’t, as an adult, as a young adult, I didn’t go to the dentist unless there was a real problem, so, I mean, I practiced good dental hygiene and things. I just didn’t want to go to a dentist. I think the first time I came here after having so much things, I had gone to another, a couple other dentists when I had to have work done, and they just didn’t, I really, my emotional fears hadn’t been alleviated really when I went there.
I mean, I went, I got taken care of what was usually a toothache or a broken tooth or something, something that I, if I went to the dentist earlier, it was because it was an emergency situation. I came to this practice with Dr. Pape, and she’s alleviated my fear. I can’t, she kind of, she just alleviated my fear.
She talked to me emotionally about the whole thing and made sure, talked to me throughout everything that she was doing, made sure that she knew that I wasn’t in pain. There was, you know, when I did have to have, I think, a cavity filled that first time, and it was, I just felt so much more at ease. Having a dentist that listens to your fears and what your anxieties are, if you can verbally express that to them and they listen to you, in my case, it made me come back here to get care, start getting consistent care.
The dentist that I’d been to before didn’t really make me feel like they were going to pay attention to how I was, my anxieties about it. So I got what had to be taken care of done, and then I was done until the next emergency. When I came here, I felt like I had, I was really listened to emotionally, and I could come start getting regular care and feel better about that myself.
And then, I mean, it’s not that, it’s funny, it’s not that I don’t have any anxieties anymore, but I can make an appointment and come and I feel okay about it. I just, I know that it’s going to be good.