I was alright with the dentist until I had braces.
Two years of hell. Two years of going every four weeks to let somebody hurt me who didn't care they were hurting me? Two years of constant, throbbing pain, bleeding from the wires not being trimmed correctly (I had to trim them myself constantly so they'd stop ripping up my mouth), and not being able to eat? (A big problem when you're underweight.) Make braces a part of the penal system, people will straighten up! It wasn't just the braces. There were many awful incidents around. First, three of my teeth were stuck ("impacted", meaning my baby teeth would never fall out since the permanent teeth wouldn't come down on their own), and the idiot in charge of my teeth decided he didn't like two of my permanent teeth that were already in for no good reason. That was the first time I was seriously suicidal, I had it all planned out so I could avoid the surgery. But what stopped me is that I knew my dad wouldn't help her clean up any mess I wasn't able to prevent and my mom would have it all by herself as usual, so I didn't. I'm glad my parents were merciful and had me put to sleep, because I would have been in a very rough psychological state after witnessing having five of my teeth pulled. Do you know how hard it is to eat with five of your teeth missing? Or how embarrassing it is to try to talk to people with so many teeth missing? I was already underweight, there were many times during those first few weeks my mother nearly put me in the hospital because I was starving to death because it was so painful to eat.
And the guy was disgusting! He never wore a mask and always had coffee and beef jerky before working on our braces. When a spacer popped out of my sisters mouth into her hair, he just plucked it with the tweezers and put it back in. Ew! Then one day he put a finger straight up his nose and then directly into my mouth. EW!!! And then there was the glue. That awful, awful glue. The first time, they put it behind my front teeth so I couldn't close my mouth. And therefore couldn't chew. I was losing what pound or two I had gained since the surgery, plus some. It also greatly irritated my gums, and they swelled up past my teeth. I think my mom had to threaten that idiot to get rid of it. And then he did it again, on my back teeth a few months later. There goes my weight again since I couldn't eat! I forgot how we convinced him to get rid of it that time.
So I'm not very keen on dentists anymore. All that crap made my teeth very sensitive. I can't eat cold things anymore because the scars in my mouth send shocks of pain through my jaw and nose. And I can't have my teeth "polished" anymore, or whatever they call that loud little spinny brush. That thing is really painful, I don't like it! And of course, since hygienists are the biggest bitches of the medical world worse than the woman who stabs you with things, they just mock me, laugh at me, and call me names because I don't want me teeth polished. I don't do fluoride treatments either, and I get called names for that. Fluoride makes me nauseous, no matter how well I rinse out my mouth to get rid of it. And ever since I've had braces, my gums bleed nearly every time I brush. Lovely. I brush, floss, and use the mouthwash, so I reckon I'm just stuck with bloody gums now after all the ripping and tearing they went through. I did have gingivitis for the longest after I had braces because they are so poorly constructed it's difficult to clean your teeth, but my gums aren't red and swollen anymore. Still bleeding though.
I haven't been in years and I'm not sure if I'll be going back.
I've been twice as an adult, same clinic, different dentist. He's wonderful. He understands my anxiety and let an assistant have it for getting mad at me. He'll drop everything and give me more novocaine if I'm feeling something. But I still freak out. There are enough sensory issues to make it pretty miserable without PTSD, but, even so, I can't get rid of that fear associated with how I was treated. 
