A relatively painless trip to the dentists

I will come clean. I'm not embarrased. I struggle with accepting the services of dentists graciously. I well know that I'm not alone in this, and having been using many of the calming techniques learned during my years of therapy to help. I was fine as a small child, but then, one fateful day, on the cricket pitch of Admiral Tait Primary School, Eastlea, Harare, Zimbabwe, I was fielding at short square leg and the bowler bowled well wide down the leg side...The batsman did what any respectable batsman would have done and hooked it as hard as he could...The ball was flying towards me, and I distinctly remember looking behind me and seeing the second umpire, and thinking "if I don't catch this, it's going to hit him." The next thing I remember is lying in the grass feeling a tooth on the inside of my mouth, and thinking about how much trouble I was going to get in...I left the field to the applause of the opposition (which greatly offended me at the time, as I was in incredible pain). There followed months of intrusive dental work, massive needles and a liquid diet (which my mum to her endless credit tried to make as varied and interesting as possible). Later in life, this caused all sorts of further problems which lead to more intrusive dental work, massive needles but fortunately never a return to only being able to eat pureed food. So, yeah, I always get a subconcious flare up when I sit in the old chair (or indeed walk near a dentists). But today I had a filling put in where an old one had fallen out and couldn't believe how straightforward and painless it was. An injection which really did feel like a little scratch, a professional, sensitive and informative dentist and a nice new composite filling which matches my teeth. And they take NHS patients! Too good to be true? I hope not...