This entry is nothing but TMI and gross. Be forewarned.

So, I have the gag reflex from hell. I gag on my toothbrush every single morning without fail. I gag if anything's remotely gross, if anything gets shoved into the back of my throat, period. This was already bad from birth, but after having pneumonia, and the Cough From Hell that made me cough to the point of vomiting (a lot) every day for a year before it went away, it got worse.

Dentists, as you can imagine, really hate me. Every dentist appointment needs a followup, I haven't had an X-ray in years because there's no way I can tolerate the bite wings being shoved in there even if I STAY CALM and BREATHE THROUGH MY NOSE and HOLD MY BREATH, it's all this agony and drama and the dentists always telling me what a horrible person I am and how my teeth are gonna rot out of my head by the age of 30 if I can't try harder and shape up and brush for 2 minutes. (I'm lucky to get in 15 seconds before the gag comes in, and I don't brush if I've eaten any food at all because it will come back up, so no night brushing.) I am very sick of being told "it's all in my head" and "mind over matter" and "just get over it." Um, it's been 30 years and that ain't working. There's the occasional tip here and there that say, improves it by five seconds or something, but that still doesn't stop the dental pukefest. And I am tired of being SHAMED AND GUILTED every fucking time I go. I'm sick of being the problem child BAD GIRL.

So I have some cavities that actually hurt (this is a first) and after a week and a half, got an emergency appointment with the one nice dentist I ever met in my life. And this time he literally threw up his hands and quit. And fired me, basically. He's anti-drugs (did not know this when I started going there, but he was nice enough about my gagging that I overlooked it), and he was all, "I can't do anything for you, you need to find a guy who will drug you up every single time you go." To be fair, he was about as nice about it as one can be under the circumstances, and said he'd try to find a drug-happy replacement, but I still feel like crap.

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