On Monday I went to the dentist because I felt as though my teeth were splitting apart. Somewhere over the last two months I started getting food stuck inbetween these two teeth in the back and it was becoming really annoying. I went to the dentist initially for a consultation for braces or something to push the teeth back together. As he started looking he discovered I had a cavity in one of the teeth which caused the back of the tooth to loose some tooth resulting in a small gap. My now free consultation turned into $60.00 out of pocket cost for a filling.
The dentist numbed my mouth up and started drilling. Suddenly he starts saying “Oh, oh yea, there it is… definitely the cause.” He continues on his expedition into my mouth and suddenly goes “uh oh, Hand me the camera!” Suddenly he is taking pictures of my tooth, drilling a little more, taking more pictures. Then he calls in another dentist into the office and says take a look at this, this is a good example. I’m now thinking to myself how does a cavity become a case study don’t they see them every day?
The dentist leans me up and starts showing me the pictures; Here is the original cavity, you can see it here after I drilled down. Then he explains that due to the food stuck in between the teeth all the time another cavity formed on an adjacent tooth. O.K, I’m thinking but this still isn’t a cause to break out the camera and call in the other doctors. He goes onto explain how in the tooth with the original cavity, there was a filling. Somehow the underside of the filling started to decay so he took the liberty of drilling almost all the tooth out. At this point he takes his gloves off and says This is a great candidate for a crown, I’ll have the office manager come in and go over the financing.”
So my consultation turned into a filling, which turned into two fillings and then turned into a filling plus a crown. I’m sitting there in disbelief as the office manager shows me the $350.00 bill that I need to come out of pocket if I accept the treatment plan. I’m sitting there thinking to myself “Do I really have a choice, I’m literally missing a tooth back there and it’s drilled down pretty far, if I don’t accept this it’s really going to hurt later.” I call the bank to transfer some money from my emergency fund into my checking account and I pay the bill. Three hours later I walk out with an appointment for my crown, a temporary crown in my mouth and a sore feeling in my bottom. I think I was robbed by my dentist!
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Yikes. I’ve had similar incidents happen several times at the vet office. Because of that, I’ve gotten into the habit of saying, before they even start with anything, “Can you please tell me how much something will cost BEFORE you do it?” It definitely helps, though I’ve never encountered that situation at the dentist!