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’m pretty resistant to novocaine and always have to ask them for more shots than they want to give. You gotta be forceful with them and stand up for yourself. It’s not worth writhing in pain because some jackass thinks they know your body better than you.
My wife is incredibly resistant to Novocaine. She’s gotta arrive at the dentist just after throwing back a Klonopin and even then her most recent bit of dental work required a total of SIX VIALS on increasingly stronger Novocaine.
But then she’ll get general anesthesia and not even get through half the pediatric dose before she’s knocked out way longer than recovery would expect despite being almost 5’11" and weighing like 190lbs. Like when she was ordering her wedding dress the people making it thought she was trolling because there’s no way her shoulders were as wide as she said they were. Iirc she had to provide a picture of her taking the measurements so they could see that she wasn’t trolling or measuring wrong.
She’s also a super lightweight with alcohol so it’s like if it crosses the blood brain barrier she’s fucking done and if not she’s a walking tank.
Dentists have a few alternatives to Novocaine that they can use, I know lidocaine is safe for dental applications and lasts a little longer than Novocaine for most people. If she’s resistant to Novocaine but not other pain blockers she’s used it’s probably worth asking about trying something else.