Today was a scary day.

Recently, okay a few months ago, I embarked on a mission to get all my teeth fixed up and get myself a celebrity smile. This mission was a hard one to start due to my dentist phobia, largely inflated by the not-so-gentle dental I visited last.

I informed my new dentist of this phobia, and I must say he has always done his very best to make sure I was comfortable and in no pain. That often meant I ended up with a fat, useless mouth for hours into the night, but I could handle that.

After months of treatment, all my holes are filled, and I am now at the stage of getting them cleaned. I have never had my teeth professionally cleaned by a dentist (oops - sorry, she is a hygienist) before, and I confess I was, and still am, very nervous about it.

You might ask, it's only a clean, why be scared? Well, there are two main reasons for my sudden fear. The first reason is that my great friend Bob, has had his teeth cleaned before and told me all about the procedure (including his bad experiences). Bob then continued to refer to my trip to the dental hygienist as my trip to the "butcher". Knowing full well that Bob likes to stir me up, I took his ramblings with a pinch of salt.

So I got to the dental surgery today at about 13:50, ready for my 14:00 appointment. The clock ticked on, well past my appointment time. If this wasn't enough to let the nerves stir, it became clear that the hygienist I was about to see, still had a patient. It was probably at about 14:15 when the agonised moans started to be heard. Those moans varied in volume and enhanced in frequency. Before long the moans were almost screams. The hygienist sought the assistance of other dental staff, including calling the receptionist in, to help hold her patient down.

Oh dear, I was so tempted to get up and silently sneak out the door and run home!

But I stayed.

Eventually (almost an hour later) the woman came out, red faced and watery eyed. I felt her pain.

The hygienist called me in. I informed her of my nerves, and how they had been inflated by my friend referring to her as the "butcher", and the "sound-effects" I had been listening to for the past hour from her surgery. She chuckled a little and informed me that she is not a butcher and that she rarely likes to hurt anyone, and that the poor lady before me was a very extreme case, and very rare.

I laid back in the chair - I won't go into all the gruesome details, needless to say there was a lot of blood. She took it easy on me, even though it did hurt - but mainly because of sensitive teeth. She told me she would do the clean over two appointments because of how sensitive my teeth were. She said that a month in between would give my teeth and gums time to heal up before she went back in for the final hack, I mean clean.

She also told me my gums will bleed for the next couple of days, but that that is a good sign, because it means my gums are healing.

My teeth have been a bit sore since, and I have a bit of a headache, but I am booked in for another appointment in November. Soon my teeth and gums will be so healthy I won't need to worry about the dentist anymore.

Wish me luck. Now I'm going to head off to bed - but I will be brushing my teeth first!