The Other Side of the Dentist’s Chair
F or almost thirty years, I had been on the other side of the dental chair. I had spent my professional life treating children with tiny mouths, tiny teeth and, very often, very large fears. I had negotiated with four-year-olds, distracted six-year-olds, reasoned with teenagers and occasionally performed what felt like psychological warfare on a completely determined child who had decided that opening his mouth was simply not going to happen. I had given countless injections, performed pulpectomies, restorations and extractions, and reassured generations of children with the same familiar words: “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.” Then, one day, I needed a root canal treatment. Suddenly, I was no longer the dentist sitting beside the chair. I was the person sitting in it. As a pediatric dentist, I had always considered myself reasonably well acquainted with dental anxiety. I had seen it in every possible form; a child hiding behind a parent, another refusing to open his mouth, so...