Going in

Putting it off for years, and what the appointment is actually like.

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Three Tests, One of Them Takes Five Seconds

Often, and it goes both ways — a tooth can infect a sinus too. Three tests separate them, and one of them takes five seconds standing in a doorway.

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Six Signs That Mean Tonight, Not Monday

There are six signs that mean hospital tonight rather than a dentist on Monday. People in these threads describe what happened when they waited.

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It Is Not Coming Through the Air

The drill is not reaching you through the air. It arrives through your jaw and skull, at a frequency the human ear is tuned to treat as an alarm.

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What People Are Actually Afraid Of

Ask people who haven't been to a dentist in years what they're afraid of. Almost nobody says pain. They say the look on the dentist's face.

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The Denture Timeline Nobody Gives You

Two weeks, six months, a year, and then years — people at each of those points describe what it was actually like. The honest timeline for getting used to dentures.

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Pain Is the Last Signal, Not the First

Enamel has no nerves, so decay travels through it in silence. By the time a tooth hurts, the damage has usually passed the point where a filling would have fixed it.