fight or flight

Dental whateverocaine has a lot of epinephrine in it, so that it shuts down the small blood vessels around your nerves. This keeps the somethingocaine from being washed away too quickly by your blood.

So, if you bring your child to the dentist to watch you get a couple of small fillings and then suddenly by accident the Xocaine injection goes into some kind of major facial artery, your whole face will go numb. Your vision will go all wacky and then you won't be able to see! You can't close your left eye without using your hands to move the eyelid! Then the other eye starts to lose its cool. Your face goes pale while you're slackjawed and drooling! The epinephrine hits your heart and you start cussing, panicking and your heart's pounding!

If you are Moomin then you look on with puzzlement and turn back to your book, trustingly believing when Mommy says everything is okay. Her vision is doubling and disappearing, and several dentists are now explaining what is happening to her but she is under some kind of epinephrine-adrenaline panic-rush and is trying to look her last upon the crazily blurring and disappearing face of her child! The book he is holding turns into a blue and white fuzz. She can still see the shape of his nose and dark eye-spots, but then his face turns into a big blurry featureless thumbprint. WHAT IF THIS IS THE LAST TIME. WHAT IF.

I closed my eyes and sat there unable to swallow... I wonder if that is what having a stroke feels like. What a fucking nightmare. When then panic started to wear off and my heart stopped pounding so hard I was finally able to cry. I thought of optical migraines, which I read about recently. Everything will be just fine, the fear is from the adrenaline in the bloodstream... They let me cry for a little bit, apologized a lot, and then filled my cavities.

I'm still shaken but obviously vision okay now since I drove us home and am typing.

God! fucking scary! 30 years of dentists and that has never happened to me. I had no idea it was possible.

Shouldn't they have checked my blood pressure or something? I'm still kind of shaky.

***
Here is an interesting article (PDF) about what just happened to me.

Comments

[whump]

In the Australian article, the author counseled the patient to see a GP, so I'd do that.

Glad you're okay.

I so don't want to go through that. Stroke is one my great fears.

[Jo]

Gah! Horrible!

I had one side of my head numbed out once, but it was nowhere near that bad. It was pretty awful though. It traveled all the way over my head to my neck, but oNLY ON ONE SIDE. BAAleeechh.

[Prentiss Riddle]

OMG. I think I just had a panic attack only from reading about it.

[Mitch]

You're freaking me out. Bad dentists, bad doctors. What's going on?
I have references for you if you want. A fabulous doc in berkeley, and a dentist who can do root canals that don't hurt too much.