Went in for a crown the other day. The dentist got called away to a different patient midway through. Anesthesia started wearing off. Dentist took her time with the other patient. I was fairly tensed up by the time she got back. I was doing my best to balance being polite with limiting how much the pain affected me. The longer she was gone, the less I was able to pretend I wasn’t in pain. My strategy for pain management is tensing inwards, and I hadn’t raised my voice or cursed. I was waiting for my turn.
A friend who works there later told me that the dentist said I scared her and she thought I was going to harm her. I can’t seem to make sense of that. I can’t think of what threatening behavior I displayed, unless dentists getting attacked by patients is just a thing they have to deal with.
I have ginger facial hair. My dentist told me that’s why I need more pain meds. She’s the only dentist I’ve ever had who doesn’t hurt me and it’s because she’s willing to dose me way beyond normal.
I also get incredible anxiety waiting at the dentist (even with her, who I absolutely adore) because of the uncertainty of when the procedure will end.
My wife is the same way. Not ginger that we can tell but the pain meds and anxiety are pretty similar. She’s gotta throw back a full Klonopin to not have ridiculous anxiety in the dentist and still needs multiple vials of numbing to do anything. Took her forever to find a dentist that actually listened to her about the Novocaine not working well and to actually get proper numbed before dental work.
If she’s got any ginger family that’s probably it. A single allele of red hair gives you the drug resistance, pain resistance, and some red facial and body hair. The second makes the head hair red