You may have noticed that I'm not a daily or even weekly blogger. I decided when I started this blog that I wouldn't force it. If I didn't have anything to say or ruminate about that I'd just not blog until I did. This has worked out really well. Except I've had a lot of things I wanted to talk about and share on my blog over the past few weeks only my teeth had other ideas!!
I don't know about you, but I hate the dentist. I didn't use to hate the dentist. Growing up I had great teeth. Never a cavity, no braces, and a lot of compliments on how beautiful my teeth were. Then around age eighteen I got a cavity. The dentist I'd grown up with had retired and we got a new one. He was a pretty good dentist but I said to him "I never got a cavity with the old dentist." He didn't really know how to reply.
Around age 21 I had my wisdom teeth pulled. This seemed like just a right of passage. A lot of my friends were going through this and I didn't think twice about it. One day my Mom informed me that our general dentist didn't participate in the network any longer. I would never be able to afford the additional costs of a non-participating dentist. So I basically stopped going to the dentist for a few years instead of trying to find someone new.
In my late thirties it suddenly dawned on me to grow up and go to the dentist. A friend, a dental surgeon, recommended one. The new dentist told me that I had a few cavities and that one of my teeth needed a root canal. Turned out the root canal tooth was cracked and needed to be extracted. I lay in the Endodontist chair with tears streaming down the sides of my face contemplating the financial cost.
You see, that same year I had decided to go back to college and finish my bachelor's degree. I had refinanced my house to have enough money to pay for the first year of school and I was saving money to pay for the second year. However, my heating and air conditioning system had died and that was a $5,000 price tag. My bathtub tried to take a trip to my kitchen and that had been a $2,500 price tag. My car decided it needed a $600 repair, and my dog decided she needed a $600 surgery. This might not seem like a lot to many, but at the time it was the difference between me finishing school or not. Luckily I have parents who stepped in and wanted to help with these large bills and my Mom shared some money she had inherited from her father with my siblings and I that kept me afloat. Teeth were not included in this financial scheme. Even with the financial help from my Mom I barely had two pennies to pinch together when all was said and done.
I won't share the oral surgeon's name who pulled my tooth out, but it hurt when he did it and it hurt a lot. He practically stood on my chest to wrench the tooth out of my mouth. The nurse held my hand while I crushed her fingers. Even a few weeks later small slivers of tooth were coming up through my gums.
The general dentist then proceeded to do a lousy job with a filling in one of my molars that caused a lot of pain and discomfort. I still had a lot of great teeth but he seemed to want to grind them down and put crowns on them. He also was odd with his method of billing. I felt that he kept trying to bill me more than a participating dentist should be billing me. I walked away and learned to work around my bad filling and again, stayed away from the dentist.
Then a few weeks ago I ended up with a tooth ache that brought me to my knees. I've never been in so much pain. Good friends recommended a general dentist and I took what I figured was the tooth with the bad filling thinking that time had run out on the work around. I was wrong. The tooth causing all the pain was right next to it. A referral to the Endodontist ended the same way it had previously, a cracked tooth that needed to be extracted.
Now, let me tell you that this experience was a complete 180 from the previous one. My general dentist was awesome. The Endodontist was so nice. She worked really hard to get me a same day appointment with the oral surgeon knowing how much pain I was in. The oral surgeon was also really great. I never felt a thing and he pulled the tooth out in one piece. I've never been so grateful.
Since then my new dentist has worked on one filling and I've had a root canal performed on another tooth that while cracked, has a chance at being saved. It's a short tooth though so I scored a Periodontist who is going to perform a 'crown lengthening'. This means that some gum and some bone need to be removed in order for the crown to fit properly. I had a consultation with the Periodontist and he seems like he's pretty nice too. So far on this go around, all of the dentists I've seen are super nice, and really go out of their way to make sure you're comfortable and that they do a good job on your teeth. Most important, they listen when I'm talking.
I've got a lot to look forward to this year with regards to my teeth - for the two teeth that were extracted I need to talk to someone about implants and I have the original bad filling still to be taken care of. Remember I went back to college? Well thanks to that activity I was able to advance in my job and can actually afford my dental work. My company offers Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) too so I've put money in there to pay for the out of pocket expenses that aren't covered by my dental plan.
I shouldn't have stopped going to the dentist. Maybe I could have avoided the second extraction and the problem filling might have been taken care of. I should have searched for a new dentist when the guy I didn't like turned out to be so crappy. In fact, I should have searched for a new dentist when my old dentist stopped participating. Well, I can't change any of that. I can make sure that I have great doctors all around going forward.
How does this tie in to my theme about choice? Well, choose to do the smart things in life, they're not that hard if you put a little effort in to them and maybe it will make things easier down the road. Choose to shop around for doctors you want to see, don't just stop going to the doctor due to a bad experience. There are other doctors to choose from. At least I never gave up on brushing and flossing!!
