The best way to endure pain is to enjoy it?

A root canal treatment. My worst fear. It came true last week.

I never forgot my first visit to the dentist at the age of 6.

They assured me that it would just hurt as little as an ant bite.
a) I didn't consider an ant bite as painless and b) I didn't want to imagine an ant biting me inside my mouth!
I was shocked.

When I was 15 I read a poem written by Ogden Nash on the same, garbed in humour of course. You can read it below. I thought if a great poet could feel this way, my fears were perfectly justified.

Another time I had read somewhere that the worst pains of all was endured during childbirth. The second was on a dentist’s chair.

None of these accidental readings really helped me in my future visits to the dentist.

My terror of it only grew.

I did not mind the idea of getting rid of all my teeth once and for all and replacing them with dentures. Until someone told me that a tooth extraction hurts worstest!

Now I shall live the rest of my days in fear of the requirement of a tooth extraction. Great!
(I think I just heard the wisdom tooth in my mouth snicker. gulp!)

Anyway, last week I got a root canal treatment done and believe me it was not as bad as I envisioned it to be. Yes, the injection hurt. But its over in 10 seconds. After that you feel one side of your mouth swell up and droop to one side.

Relax! It only feels like that when a part of your face becomes numb.

Like Mr. Nash puts it in his poem, the thing about dental visits is that it is both physical and mental pain.

I would say it's more mental than physical.

I tried to alter my mental state by forcefully thinking that I enjoyed the scraping sounds in my mouth and the needle (or whatever it is) poking into my gums through my tooth.

No, that didn't work.

What works is to just shut your eyes and think about something else altogether to distract you. Like the next movie you would like to see or what you need to get done at work etc.

Here's the poem and all the best with your visits to the dentist. Meanwhile brush and floss daily.

THIS IS GOING TO HURT JUST A LITTLE BIT
One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopan.
Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest,
so hard to retain calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm,
So hard to give your ususal cheerful effect of benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity
And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on
And it is cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve on your head that aren't being irked on.
Oh some people are unfortunate to be worked on by thumbs,
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to being polished
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
And the circumstances that adds to your terror
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you do when try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa
And then at last he says, That will be all, but it isn't because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something I suspect is generally used to put shine a horse's hoof,
And you totter to your feet and think, Well it's over now and after all it was only this once,
And he says come back in three monce.
And this O Fate, is I think the most vicious that thou ever sentest,
That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
When the chief reason he wants his teeth to be in good condition is so that he won't have to go the dentist.