My Oral Surgery - OMG! – and that’s just from the price

Let me try to keep the background as concise as possible. I have had multitude dental interventions mostly stemming from an accident I had in my adolescence. The event was one of those significant moments in my life that is worthy of its own blog entry. You can find it here. Anyway, fast forward some 40 years to 2008 and I had to have a most conspicuous front tooth removed. My cosmetic options are.

1. Commence wearing overalls and playing the banjo.

2. Continue to wear the ‘retainer-like’ device called a “flipper” fashioned for me when the tooth was removed. I never had braces or a retainer but wearing this thing is quite uncomfortable.

3. Get a bridge

4. Get bone grafted around an implant which after about six months of healing gets a ‘post’ put on to be a base for a crown fashioned by my dentist.

Well, I opted for the latter. Well I thought I opted for the latter. Today I had xrays made and plaster casts and they ‘discussed’ with me their fees. Their apparently not covered by insurance fees. This is a good time for me to interject that I am a card carrying skin-flint cheap bastard (SFCB in good standing). So the <gag> $2500 (for which I gave them half today and half will be due after my surgery on Friday) is probably perfectly reasonable to many. But I am having serious buyer’s remorse. I called my Dentist office to find out how much the bridge was again, but had to leave a message. I called the Oral Surgeon’s office expressing how stupid I felt for not getting these facts before hand but I’d like to ‘discuss’ that fee a little more before my appointment on Friday.

Let me add that I was referred to the surgeon by the first dentist I have ever held any respect for in all my life, and the surgeon seems like a very amiable and intelligent guy. The surgeon removed the tooth early February after I had a little fajita incident on New Years Eve (laugh it up vegans). When I had the tooth removed the surgeon’s office was in an older combination retail/medical office complex. The appointment today was at their new digs in a brand new medical complex that looks like it could be featured in Architectural Digest. I waited in their nice waiting room till a very energetic technician called me back for the x-rays. The x-ray machine was this futuristic (to old toothless geezers like me) contraption that whirled around me head while I bit down on a prophylactic protected straw like thing. It whirred, hummed and buzzed and I think it also might have somehow scanned my checking account and credit card numbers from my wallet. After another brief stint in the waiting room, bouncy tech called me again back to a spacious patient room. I had to initial a lengthy consent form that involved about a half dozen signatures and thirty initials. The doctor came in and I asked them both some questions about some of the items such as potential risk for growing tusks and or permanent effluent slobbering as I was finishing my thirtieth initial. While they were answering the questions they pointed out that I overlooked that the pages had items on the back that required thirty more initials.

The doc asked me if they had discussed his fee during the last visit. I said I didn’t believe he had. The tooth removal was 50% covered by my dental insurance and my out of pocket costs was $650. I just assumed that this surgery would be at least within a few hundred dollars of the same and also at least 50% covered by insurance. Bad, bad assumptions. He told me that Fiona (not real name) would cover the fee when I officially scheduled the surgery on my way out on Friday.

Fiona told me with a cheery smile the appointment date and time and then told me what the fee for the surgery on Friday with a stone faced , steely eyed gunslinger stare. In the same breath she told me they needed a 50% deposit right then and there for the appointment. I obediently wrote the check while my mind was racing with questions. Questions like how much the bridge option or banjo lessons would cost.

I called my wife expecting her to mollify me with a contrast of the cost to the value of preserving my cheery and uplifting smile. I didn’t get mollified in the least. No she only asked more questions that I couldn’t answer - questions which were painfully lacking in their mollification value.

So I left the message with the Dentist office to find out how much the bridge would be. And I called the surgeons office and apologetically explained my remorse and said I would call tomorrow to confirm or cancel my appointment.

To be continued.