Fear of the dentist's chair is by no means just for younger patients

Read the following post by Bruce Corcoran in The Chatham Daily News :

The first visit to the dentist's office can be a trying time for a child, but it's nothing compared to the first filling.

Our daughter experienced her first drilling and filling last week. I'm sure it was a more harrowing experience for her dad than for her.

Both my wife and I have always had a phobia when it comes to dentists. For me, I hate the high-pitched scream of the drill. As a child, I once had a dentist in Quebec fill a small cavity without any freezing. He said it was just a surface cavity and I shouldn't require freezing. It hurt.

I also remember the days of feeling the needle go in and feeling the discomfort of the freezing agent as it was pumped into my gums. That sucked.

And then came the drill.

I believe more than a few armrests on dental chairs from Malartic to North Bay and then Lindsay had damage done from my white-knuckled grip. Heck, when I go in for a cleaning, I still have to make a conscious effort to relax.

With all that angst, I'm sure some of it was empathetically transferred to my daughter prior to her inaugural drilling.

She was nervous heading into the appointment. But by the time it was done, and it wasn't long at all, she wondered what all the fuss was about.

We went so far as to sign her up for a bit of nitrous oxide -laughing gas -to ensure she was relaxed.

Worked like a charm (I should have taken a couple of hits as I sat and watched). She calmed right down in the chair while the dentist, Nicole Baggs, got down to work. A quick application of numbing gel to the gum, followed by the freezing needle -where the doc told my daughter to wiggle her feet during the process (a great distraction), and a short wait for the freezing to take effect before the drilling began.

Through all this, I found myself getting uptight at times, first as it looked like she was in pain when the needle went in (the foot wiggling) and then as I heard the drill kick in.

And then it was over. All in 25 minutes. And the final five of that was to clear the nitrous oxide out of my kid's system.

As for the pain, my girl said there was none. In fact, she asked when the needle went in. It turns out the wiggling was nothing more than following instructions.

Naturally, a filling for an eight year old is followed by two things, a lot of poking, prodding and playing with the rubber side of one's face while it's still frozen, and a milkshake (the latter at the "order" of the dentist).