Nothing's Free, Especially Dentists...

My husband brought me a "FREE visit" certificate from his dentist. So, I thought, "okay, I'll skip my usual appointment with the dentist who's been taking care of me since I started babysitting his kids in the 7th grade(which was an untold millinum ago) and go to my husband's trusted dentist. I mean, it's free what can it hurt?"

Mwahahahaha.... That's what the "free visit" dentists of the world are doing right now. Evil laughing and rubbing their grubby little hands together.

I'm.... and adult. I've had my fair share of fillings. I had braces as a teenager--although I admittedly didn't wear the head gear, it hurt, darn it! But I've never had "major" work done. Well, other than for my wisdom teeth removed, but that's routine. That doesn't mean I have horrible dental health. I can proudly say that I haven't had a cavity in quite a while. Not that I would be floored if I was told I needed one filling--I LOVE sugar.

However, after taking x-rays and poking at me for 3 minutes (in which nothing hurt or was sticky), my dear husband's dentist went on to explain to me that I needed 4-phases of work. Yes, 4-phases. ALL of my past fillings needed to be removed and redone. The tooth I cracked as kid that has been repaired with tooth colored filling that looks just fine, well it needs to be whittled down and a vaneer put on. Might I add that he had no clue that it had ever been worked on until he saw the x-rays!

The very first phase of this work, which I might add, they were happy to start to work on right then, would be a very reasonable $1700. Okay. At this point, I freaked!

FREAKED! I nodded, and kept smiling until I could get the hell out of there. I mean I went from thinking maybe I'd had enough chocolate recently to need a minor filling to being told I needed 4 phases of dental work done, the first phase of which would run $1700. We're talking about $8000 of work, total. Hello!

So, I've set an appointment for tomorrow with MY dentist and I'm going to lay it all out. I plan to tell him that I took my husbands free little certificate (which I might add didn't end up including a cleaning, just x-rays and the almighty doctor's expert analysis) and thought I'd save myself a few bucks, but instead ended up unable to sleep because I was worried all of my teeth might fall out. Yikes!

My husband said, "maybe your fillings need to be replaced." And I explained that I was aware that fillings don't last forever. They have to be replaced. However, not unless they've shrunk, or decay is around them. Replacing a filling before then would be like replacing your break pads before they squeal. You can do it, but what's the point. They work perfectly fine until then. Then you have a window of time to have them replaced without hurting anything. That ALL of my fillings would fall into that window at the same time and that that window would come with no warning is just too fishy.

Well, I'm off to nightmare land. That's what I get for sneaking a free visit to another dentist. Figures, it felt like I was cheating already. I kept looking around wondering if someone would see me going in and tell my dentist. Now I have to tell him. Great!

April