Dentist Fear

by Marianne Rivers
(UK)

Why a dentist fear is no joke. About fours years ago, my child did not show any signs of dental phobia because I could still bring her to the family dentist for periodic check-ups. Everything seemed to go well with her and the dentist then, until the unfortunate incident of an 8-year-old girl who died due to a bad dental experience.

This incident was aired in the local news here in our country for quite a spell and it could not be helped that my daughter and her friends read, watched, and talked about it so often during the day. The incident I am referring to is the case of the young girl, who refused to go to the dentist because she had a bad dental experience when she was four years old. It seemed her dentist accidentally scratched her tongue during a dental examination and since then, she refused to go back to her dentist.

Due to her poor dental condition, the young girl easily broke a bad tooth while eating a candied sweet and refused to see a dentist despite her tooth pain. Her parents brought her to a hospital instead against her will. The mother accordingly signed a consent that the bothersome tooth of her child will be extracted. However, according to her, she was surprised to see her child emerging out of the hospital clinic pale and ashen, because the hospital dentist who attended to her saw it fit to remove all of her baby teeth.

Once she was at home, this poor child kept to herself in her room, refused to open her mouth, grew weak without food or any form of sustenance and practically wasted herself, all because of a bad dental experience. The child died after two weeks and most of the other parents who read and saw this news were outraged at the parents of the girl because they did not do anything to save their child. Understandably, if this piece of news affected me then it also affected my daughter.

She made me make a promise not to force her to go to the dentist anymore, for fear that our dentist will also decide on taking away all her teeth. I tried to explain it to her that this was not totally the fault of the dentist. She is so unyielding; I just hope this thing will pass. You probably have your own dental issues with your kids too; I could use some good advice to prevent a fear of dentist developing.