If there’s any place people dislike visiting more than hospitals, it’s the dentist’s. And one California woman’s terrifying experience during a recent dental appointment will definitely make her think twice about returning to this particular one. She was getting several cavities filled and had been given numbing cream for her mouth along with an anesthetic injection for the pain. Things seemed fine until she began to feel a bit too numb in her throat; that’s when an assistant gave her some water. Then, in a traumatic experience, she “almost died at the dentist.
“I started choking on water and couldn’t get any air in for about 30 seconds and then struggled to breath for 2-3 minutes,” the woman recalled in her post on r/AmIOverreacting. She claims that it wasn’t until an hour and a half had passed that she could begin breathing normally again. She asked the workers over and over if they could call 911, but they only tried to calm her down, saying it was just a panic attack.
The woman was eventually able to get her cavity fillings done, but at the cost of almost choking to death on water. Needless to say, her husband was appalled that no one called for any EMTs to come save her from what could have been a life-threatening situation. “Maybe they should have? Or maybe this happens more than I think and that is why they didn’t call 911?” she questioned, wondering if the dentists knew something she didn’t.
The Woman Mistook Her Throat Numbness for Being Unable to Breathe
While plenty of people sympathize with the woman’s awful and alleged near-death experience at the dentist, some knowledgeable commenters claim that she actually might have been alright. “They didn’t call 911 because they didn’t need to,” remarked a Redditor, saying how she only thought she was choking because she was panicking from the numb feeling in her throat. However, the argument is that she wouldn’t have been able to breathe through her nose if that were truly the case.
Another commenter, claiming to be a dentist herself, says that it’s not possible to “numb the swallowing reflex with either topical or local” anesthesia. For that, she would have needed IV sedation; that’s why the dentist and the assistants kept reassuring her that it was just a panic attack. She did say in her story that “I started to panic a bit as I couldn’t breathe through my nose either as it felt as if my throat was closing. It was 100% the scariest moment of my life.”
People in a r/askdentists post clarify the same thing: she only felt like her throat was closing but could breathe fine. The main danger was her panic attack, which the workers did well in calming her down. As one person puts it simply, “Your brain doesn’t know how else to interpret the numb feeling.”
