DENTIST VISIT

This morning I had a dentist appointment. OK, to give you a little background on my problem... this past January during my regular cleaning visit the hygienist notice a hole in the side of my top right back tooth. After X-rays it was determined by my Dentist, Dr. Liptak that it could not be filled and I either needed to have an extraction or a root canal. He suggested a root canal since last year I had the Wisdom tooth next to it extracted and now I would be down 2 in the top right rear.

I do have pretty good dental insurance so I thought for sure it would be covered. Their billing lady told me root canals were considered "surgery" and needed prior approval and as soon as they had gotten that from my insurance they would contact me and let me know what my OOP would be, unless I was in pain and then they would guesstimate the cost and do it right away. I was in no pain and hadn't even realized the hole was there so I chose to wait. Approx four weeks later I received a notice from my Ins Co and my Dental Office saying I was approved however my OOP was almost $600 and they wanted that paid up front!

Of course I didn't have the money since I am still on work. I mean I can pay all my monthly needs but coming up with another $600 was impossible so I was torn weather or not I should just pull it out. It still wasn't hurting me so I continued to ignore it, well I ignored the fact that I needed to do something but took special care not to chew super hard things on that side and always brushed paying attention to the hole to make sure nothing got stuck inside.

Well my luck ran out last Friday when I cracked it further by chewing gum(I Know... I Know). I called the Dental Office hoping to get in before the holiday weekend and figured I would just have it pulled. Of course there were no openings and since it still didn't hurt I could wait until this week. They had an opening with Dr. Craven this morning, he's not my regular Dentist but I wasn't going to be picky.

I'm so glad I went in, not only did he save the tooth by filling it, he said I don't need to worry about it again unless it hurts. So it ended up costing me $56 vs $600. He was a much younger Dentist than my regular and was willing to try some sort of new machine they had gotten and it worked!! I think I may switch to him permanently since my guy is getting pretty old anyways.