I have to have my wisdom teeth out. This is bad enough for a normal person, but it's a disaster for me as I am totally dentist-phobic. I can't explain why. I've never had any specifically bad experiences in a dentist's chair. I think it's a number of things - claustrophobia, loss of control, simply hating having someone poking around inside my mouth, fear of pain because I've never had any dental treatment before and wouldn't know what to expect... Just a routine dental exam brings me out in a cold sweat. Luckily I have the strongest teeth ever. Every time I have ever been to the dentists in my life, they have simply poked around a bit, and complimented me on my uber-strong teeth. So, finding a visit to the dentist an unpleasant experience, and knowing that I would be unlikely to require treatment, I hadn't been for about five years.

A few weeks ago, I got to thinking that my teeth were looking a bit yellow recently and could probably do with a scale and polish. So I booked an appointment with a dentist for a routine exam. Whilst he was poking around with his poky thing, everything seemed to be going ok until his poky thing actually SUNK into my upper right wisdom tooth. It was the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life. He informed me that it was badly decayed, and just in case I didn't believe him, insisted on showing me with the help of a couple of judiciously-placed mirrors. Sure enough, the back of the tooth - the one part of my mouth only a dentist is ever going to see - was a blackened, festering cavity. I nearly vomited on the spot. He told me that it needed to come out ASAP, and that I should have the others out too as they were all impacted and thus likely to go the same way.

I couldn't bring myself to eat at all for the first couple of days - and normally I eat more than a rugby player. Got sent home from work for being hysterical and hypoglycaemic and managed some soup, but really couldn't bring myself to eat solid food at all. Over the next couple of weeks I became a soup connoisseur, developed a taste for Dairylea Triangles and became very good at making smoothies and milkshakes. I also developed pain in the decayed tooth, which made the idea of having it out much more attractive.

My initial thought had been that I couldn't possibly have this done without general anaesthesia, but when my mother told me about a clinic down the road from her that specialises in IV sedation where she had slept through a root canal last year, I decided to be brave and give that a go instead. So I'm booked in to have three wisdom teeth out (the fourth hasn't come through) under heavy sedation tomorrow. I have been assured by everybody I know who has ever had anything done under sedation before that I won't remember the experience, so really all I have to worry about is post-operative pain and complications. I'm most worried about dry sockets, which sound absolutely horrendous. Wish me luck!