@pleiades
Not everyone handles general anesthesia well and it shouldn’t be necessary when a local (novocaine) can do the job.
Just call around and find a dentist who will do it without general anesthesia. Its a perfectly reasonable request.
I had all four of mine out with just novocaine. I didn’t feel any pain per se, but there was pressure and awkward positioning since I have a small mouth. And there were also some rather weird crunching sounds.
He explained that the root was wrapped around the bone “but don’t worry, it will be fine once it heals” ha ha.
Some dentists only use general anesthesia because they don’t really want to deal with a patient who is aware of what’s going on. They find it a lot easier to deal with someone who is knocked out.
But its your body and you have every right to determine who does what to it.
Find a dentist willing to accommodate your wishes.
BTW: I did at a later point in time have a very horrid experience when I had an emergency situation with an infected regular tooth requiring extraction.
He never explained anything to me. Just knocked me out. And when I started to come to they had me in this little room and I started going out into the hallway in a panic since I was extremely disoriented and had no idea what was going on.
When I finally got home, I found myself unwilling to go to sleep and afraid all that night because that experience was so terrifying.
That was the last time I ever had general anesthesia for a tooth procedure. Never again it was awful.