Today was rough, but didn’t start out that way. How it started was I was going to take my kids to the dentist, then back to school and then go to lunch with a friend. We have a lovely children’s dentist. The office ladies always schedule both the children at the same time so when I take them out of school, only I have to drive once.

My eldest was in and out with her procedure within 10 minutes. Ivy was a different story. She gets in the chair and they give her some preliminary shots of lidocaine. When they start drilling, she starts complaining that she feels it and it hurts. The dentist tells her that she is just reacting to the vibration of the drill, but I can see there’s real pain there.

Thankfully, I am there to remind the dentist that Ivy has Ehlers-Danlos and therefore lidocaine is not as effective for her. He stops immediately and gives her an additional dose of lidocaine all throughout the back of her mouth. He restarts, but she continues to complain of pain. Thankfully there isn’t much more to do and he finishes up with the tooth in the back.

Ivy also needs a small extraction up front of a baby tooth. The other one came out at home, but he wants to get this one out because the adult tooth is trying to come in and is looking like a second set of teeth, like a shark. Unfortunately, it does not come out easily and she complains of pain. He stops and gives her an additional dose of lidocaine. He starts again and this time just wrenches it out very quickly. She just bleeds everywhere and doesn’t stop bleeding and is crying and holding me and it’s horrible. He feels really bad and gives her five toys from the toy drawer. That is a record for our household.

I am so frustrated because I don’t know what to do. My first kid doesn’t have Ehlers-Danlos and we have been going to this dentist for over ten years now, since we’ve lived in Hillsboro.

When Ivy was first tested positive, I told the dentist, the staff and wrote it on her intake form. Yet, when my daughter complained of pain, the dentist gaslit her and told her that it was just vibrations.

There are at least two different studies that show what I am saying is real and not imaginary. The first shows that pain in general does not get reduced as well with the caines: lidocaine, novacaine, etc., and a second study that shows that Ehlers-Danlos patients experience inadequate pain control at the dentist at a rate of 88% compared to 33% of the general population.

Our pediatric dentist has been practicing for over 20 years, so perhaps he has seen kids pretending that things hurt, but this was not funny. She was in real pain and he was continuing on.

I have trauma from going to the dentist and experiencing excruciating pain. My current dentist does not force anything, and when I complain, she stops immediately redoses me, and then waits to make sure that I can feel nothing when I when she touches my mouth with a probe.

Here are the two titles of studies that I found regarding Ehlers-Danlos and pain management. “Resistance to local anesthesia in people with the Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes presenting for dental surgery” and “Patients with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome experience reduced effectiveness of lidocaine local anesthetic: a randomized cross-over clinical trial.” It was one Google search away.