I swear teeth cleanings are like when you have your house inspected for termites or have your A/C evaluated. You're going to come out the other end spending thousands on stuff you can't even see. Javalina had a regular tooth cleaning and all seemed to be going well until she was about done. The hygienist was pretty cool, we were having pretty good banter talking about our kids and stuff, then of course she throw in "have you all considered braces, he could really benefit from them?" I said I am sure y'all would say he needs them, but nobody has really said he needs them, my wife wouldn't stop worrying about it if people were generally telling us something like that. She seemed to let it go, just saying one more time that he would benefit from wearing some.
I thought I had gotten through the whole ordeal without spending a ton of money. She was talking about showing him how to floss and then while she was going at it, she came over to the right side and did an "oh my! I am going to need an x-ray after all and a dentist to look at this." She had me go over and look in his mouth and to me it looked ugly but like a blister from a canker sore, not a "we have to do something about this right now." The dentist came in and at first he seemed very calm and relaxed until he saw his mouth. He took what he said was the stuff they use to fill root canals, which was in the shape of a pin and stuck it through the blister until it wouldn't go further and then they took an x-ray. He said the material would bend and follow the origin path of what caused the blister and it shows really well in an x-ray because it is a dense material.
He then explained that what had happened was that an infection formed under the crown that was installed in March and not having anywhere to go exploded out the gum line and had been there for some time. He said this was very dangerous and had to be attended to immediately, if it hadn't gone out the gum line, it could have swelled over night at any time between March and now and caused suffocation and death. I'm still thinking it's just a tooth dude, chill out. He wanted to go in there STAT! to try and save the tooth and seemed real concerned. I was more like "ehh, his brother lost one of his adult teeth in the front and has gotten along fine with the fake one, this is in the back of the mouth, pull that bad boy out." He insisted that the right thing to do is try and save the tooth. I said "fine, do what you have to do, I'm sure this is going to cost me."
The business manager came by and said because you have such shitty insurance (my interpretation), your portion of the bill is going to be $780 for this and possibly $220 for that or $133 for this other thing. Thinking dentists, I was like "is there another sheet? You all are never this cheap." Go ahead. While the manager was showing me this in front of the receptionist, beautiful girl, but I don't think very sharp, says "your co-pay for today is $28.12." I said "be more clear, I got extra dentists and x-rays looking in his mouth and emergency procedures, do you mean $2,812 or do you actually mean $28.12. She was a little lost in her head, then said "uhh twenty eight dollars and twelve cents."
I thought the dentist was a cool guy, he said he had worked in three continents, and had an accent. He said he had worked in China, Africa, and now the US. He also mentioned he was from Iraq. I just said "wow, you must have lived an interesting life so far and you look so young to be doing this for ten years." He said "well, yes, I was born in a war, then I grew up in another one, so nothing really shakes me anymore." This was while the assistant was taking some more x-rays, then he walked back to my son to continue. All I could think of to say was "shit, you must have nerves of steel." He kind of nodded in agreement and went back to work.
We got there at 12:30, half an hour early. I fell asleep, even though Javalina kept kicking me, got up at 1:30, thinking WTF!? I got up and started staring at the receptionists for some sort of "sorry for the delay"... I could tell they just threw my kid at the next hygienist that came out, she was all "give me 5 minutes to get ready." She was nice enough, but yeah, the whole thing turned from a 20 minute teeth cleaning, to a three hour emergency surgery ordeal. The dentist said he had cleaned up all the infection and done some measurements, he felt confident the tooth is still ok and the crown did not break, so he wants my son to take amoxycillin for a week and then come back next Friday to finish the work. What can you say but "OK, and thank you, Doc."
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