Dentists Need To Know

By Sophie Olson

Working with The University of Bristol, Bristol Dental School and activists Viv Gordon, Patricia Debney and Hazel Larkin to coproduce research ‘Improving Access to Oral Health Services for Adult Survivors of Child Sex Abuse’ was an encouraging project to be part of. Many survivors of child sexual abuse (including myself) find accessing dentistry almost impossible, and I look forward to the day in which survivors’ needs are recognised. Without training in the area of CSA, and the impact on our future lives, we can be mistakenly perceived as ‘nervous’ patients rather than traumatised ones. Accessing dental care that is not trauma-attuned and responsive to our needs can be triggering and re-traumatising - leaving many of us avoidant.

‘Fault’  does not lie with us for not being ‘resilient’ or brave enough. It lies with a system that hasn’t (yet) evolved. Thank you to Weston Hospital Charity for funding this vital research, and to Viv Gordon for setting this ball in motion.

Here is my response to one of the creative writing tasks from the workshops. We were asked what we thought ‘dentists need to know.’

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Dentists need to know that my mouth tells a story.

The story of my life.

The story of me.

Dentists need to know that my mouth can’t tell this story with words, as they are trapped in my heart and stuck in my throat.

Words choke me.

My mouth wants to tell you but it can’t. 

There are shadows in my mouth. The nightmares crawled inside many years ago, who’s to say when. I might have been seven, six, four or one. My mouth was too small. That’s for sure. 

Dentists need to know when I show them my mouth, I’m baring my soul. I’m letting them in as I lie on my back and I’m as vulnerable as can be.

I want them to hear my story but they can’t because the silence is deafening.

Their blue-gloved fingers will search and prod and probe and hurt and I’ll stay still and lie back and say nothing at all.

I won’t make a sound.

I’ll retreat, fade away and go very small, inside my head and they won’t know and I’ll endure. I’ll endure it because that’s what we do.

We put up and shut up and shut down. 

Dentists need to know their face isn’t the first to come so close. Close enough for me to hold my breath. So close that I might die. That private and sacred spaces have been invaded before. For my own good. Because I was told to accept it. Because I had no voice. No choice.

Dentists need to know all senses are submerged. I see nothing but face. I hear nothing but instruments - cold metal on cold trays. Voices. Breathing. Mine, his, theirs.

My hands grip a chair.

I taste blood and spit.

I swallow fear but there’s too much. It is drowning me.

Shame gives it a helping hand.

Dentists need to know they’ll read my teeth like braille and it is my body that will tell the story – my frozen, sweating and shaking self. They’ll see it in my eyes and comment on the tension in my jaw. They will see the teeth that I grind. The build-up of plaque, and enamel eroded in my desperate quest to release the darkness. They will observe gums, unhealthy because of cigarettes and wine and not enough visits to the dentist but they won’t understand. They will be reading another language. A language incomprehensible.

They can’t understand.

I won’t be able to translate for them because I will have disappeared. They’ll tell me what they think my mouth is saying:

Unhealthy. (Lazy).

You should have come sooner.

I know, but I lost my way and the shadows stopped me and now I am losing myself, in the dentist’s chair. 

© Sophie Olson