Friendly advice to younger Dopers

Kiddos, let an older Doper give you some friendly advice on a few matters:

Always look both ways before you cross the street.

Eat your vegetables.

Don’t talk to strangers.

Make friends with Mr. Toothbrush. Brush every day, after every meal. Floss. See your dentist twice a year. Avoid sweets.

That way, you just might dodge the bullet of a dentist one day telling you that no, the $1800 you owe by next tomorrow is not the price of the entire implant procedure, just the price of the implant itself, i.e. a screw that you could pick up at a hardware store for 3 cents, but the extraction was an additional $500, and this doesn’t include the cost of the crown for Og knows how much but probably another $800, and oh, by the way, that massive pain you have on the other side of your mouth is not a mere sensitive tooth, but total decay which needs a root canal like today, and that’s another grand, and so sorry you can’t chew at all, but we neglected to tell you about the other 7 cavities that need to be filled at $150-200 apiece, and your insurance only covers .000001% of all this work so you might have to sell a kidney to pay for all of this but we’d like the money now so how would you like to take care of it, and all the while you’re having a hard time absorbing this avalanche of bad news all the while you’re in MASSIVE FUCKING THROBBING PAIN.

Take this advice, and maybe your life will never have to suck the way mine does right now. Ouch!

I hope you feel better tdn.

And one more piece of dental advice, don’t clench or grind your teeth. If you do, go get a night guard. You don’t want to wake up one day (like I did) with your jaw locked shut or find yourself in an akward situation where your jaw is locked open. TMJ surgery is neither fun nor cheap and your jaws will never align normally again . . . plus you’ll be in constant pain.

And yes, brush and floss everyday. Take care of those teeth if you want to keep them! I’m a teeth person and it’s the first thing I look at in other people. Nothing is better than having a beautiful smile.

:smiley:

Ouch!

Sometimes I wonder why we bother with dental insurance. The “allowable costs” are no where near the actual costs. I’d like my insurance to point me to a dentist that just charges what they cover.

Next week I go for my second bone graft as the first one disintegrated in fewer than five years - it held my $1200 screw that held the $1000 crown - which went into the garbage without so much as a faretheewell . .

So I’ll pay another $800 for the graft, then $1200 for the screw and then $1000 for the crown - of which my fuckin’ dental plan pays nuthin’ nada zippidy do-da.

Apparently only 5% of all who have this done lose the graft . . . my chances of success return to 95% on this next shot at it . . .

So I’m ignoring all other dental issues until this is finished - I want to afford what I can’t currently chew . . .

Hold on–Where are getting screwed for only $1200? You sleeping with the hygienist or something?

Great. Now I’ve got that going for me as well. :smack:

Friendly advice?? Ewwwwww…

Off to MPSIMS.

Hmm. The mod says “MPSIMS”, but the shooting pain in my mouth says “Pit.”

Are you sure it’s not saying “thpit”?

:: crickets chirping ::

<Dr. Evil>
No? Nothing?
</Dr. Evil>

What a timely thread. I’ve just about talked myself into going back to the dentist, although I know the news will be bad.

Holy shit, I’m in the club too. They pulled that same implant pricing trick on me too. I got 3 implants but now I cant afford the crowns, so I’m fucked. I feel for all of you.

:eek:

Does this mean getting a tooth pulled costs €500. It cost me €50 to get a tooth pulled just two weeks ago. The most I’ve ever paid is €120 and that was for a couple of fillings. That’s just going to a private dentist BTW not through any socialised route. I then was able to claim back some of the cost through a scheme the Gov has set up.

Man oh man is that shit expensive over in the good old US.

Hope your mouth feels better soon.

It wasn’t just an extraction, it was a bone graft as well. So I can sort of see the expense.

It’s the $1800 screw that I can’t justify.

pops another handful of skittles in his mouth and washes them down with a swig of Dr. pepper

Yeah whatever

:wink:

Move to the UK.

Discover the National Health Service!

Oh yeah. And if you have the misfortune to need a full upper denture, get the denture, and don’t let them talk you into a full set of upper implants. You will probably need sinus grafts, on both sides, which have a much greater than 5% failure rate, then you’ll need another pair of sinus grafts, then the implants **(They open up your gums all the way around, and drill holes into your skull, and pound metal rods into the holes), **then after many more months of “procedures” and many tens of thousands of dollars, **the implants will rot in your mouth and have to be removed, **costing a whole lot more thousands of dollars paid to the oral surgeon.

THEN THEY TELL YOU THAT AFTER EVERYTHING HEALS AND IF (IF!!!) THE BONE GROWS BACK, YOU CAN START THE ENTIRE “PROCEDURE” ALL FUCKING OVER AGAIN!!!

Of couse by now, you’re a little smarter than you used to be, so you shell out a mere couple thousand more bucks for a fucking denture, which you should have gotten in the first place.

Meanwhile, my (former) dentist just bought a new boat.

So, younger Dopers, the moral of this story is:

Get off your ass and ENROLL IN A DENTAL SCHOOL.

A girl I once dated: “You know, you have very nice teeth.”
Me: “Thanks, I thought so too. It’s a shame the guy I got 'em from was such a whiner about me taking them. That reminds me…if you ever feel like doing some random shoveling, please don’t do it in my backyard.”

Funny thing, that we didn’t date for very long.

I thought the whole point of the bone graft was that it helped grow actual, real bone around the implant. Is that not the case? How does the bone just disintegrate? Should I be drinking more milk?

What’s the average failure rate for dental implants…anyone know?

Lovely dental stuff… So, did you know I lost a crown today? And just now spit out another little piece of it while talking on the phone? Eeeeewww!

Guess where I’ll be first thing tomorrow?

GT

Yeah, I know. And typically when I start going to the dentist, I end up spending $2,000 minimum depending on what my insurance covers and the like - which is why I then avoid them for a couple of years and start the cycle over again.

But I’m close to making an appointment, really.