Oh dear, it's a bigger problem than it first looked!

That was the phrase used by my dentist yesterday that left a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Dentist are not my favourite people, not that I am alone in that feeling. It stems from some fairly bad experience as a child visiting the school dental clinic.

As an adult I shied away from going for a number of years and would only go when the pain from toothache was greater than the fear of going to get it treated. I had friends go with me as I would be in such a state after treatment and my dental notes had a big warning note across the top about how scared I was of getting into the dentist's chair.

Several years ago I changed to a dentist recommended by a good friend and he did a lot to ease my fear, but it was still an ordeal for me. Then I had a session of hypnotherapy for something completely different but 2 days after the session I was due at the dentist, and was amazed how much calmer I was about it all. Now, I was always sceptical about hypnosis but having exhausted all kinds of other treatments I decided to give it a go.

I made sure I chose carefully and in a safe environment and decided to book a session at a local Health Spa as one of my treatments. I'll cover the experience of hypnosis in a seperate post, and simply say here that since then I have been able to go to the dentist without too much difficulty.

So, hearing my dentist come out with the phrase above was not good.

She had checked where I had I broken my tooth and told me there was a small filiing next to it so she would take that out and re-do as one. Only trouble was, the rest of the tooth was attached to that filling and when she took it out another chunk of tooth came with it - apparently, my tooth had been cracked right across.

So, half an hour and a very thick lip later, I was on my way back to the car.

Maybe I'll stay clear of the ice-creams for a while.