Dental Anesthesia - What Happened to me?!

Dental Anesthesia - What Happened to me?

I had an abscess tooth pulled today and when my anesthesia was injected I felt fine at first but all of a sudden I felt dizzy and I started turning pale, broke out in a cold sweat, and for a while my heart rate was up. Finally things started settling and the heart rate went back down, I felt cold and was a little shaky for a bit. They did the procedure on me and I checked out with the receptionist and drove home. After I got home, once again I broke out in a much more milder sweat, then felt fine, and once again with barely any sweating. For most of the afternoon I felt a little out of it. Currently, I feel great....but I do want to get a tooth implant in the future and dont want something like anesthesia keeping me from doing it. I really had no explanation to me why that happened, I was told it sometimes causes a reaction and is normal. It was just and still is really odd to me thinking that an injection did that, not the gas. Thanks for any info here!!

You just had a vaso-vagal response. This is something that a dentist is familiar with and usually has nothing to do with the anesthetic but your anxiousness about what was going to happen. You didn't say if this was an upper or lower tooth but if it was a lower one it is possible that some of the anesthetic was injected directly into the blood stream and this will cause a slight reaction also. While scary to the individual, it's transient as you have seen. I know that the next time you're at the dentist this episode will be fore front in your thoughts but try to relax and you'll be fine.