cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything is Ok Whew. Ok, everything is fine. I called the dentist, they told me to come in right away. So I did and they checked it out, did an X-ray and I do not have so much as a cavity despite the pain. So no root canal for me! Yay! It seems that the problem is that my teeth have moved a bit since having braces and there's a point on my molar that sticks down a bit more than it should. This causes my bite to be slightly focused on that spot, resulting in some pain. He offered to grind down the enamel there and then resurface it, but I passed on that since it's not really necessary. Eventually that bit will wear down on it's own and the problem will go away. Meanwhile, my tooth and that bit of jaw will be a little sore now and then. Ok, I can deal with that. I'm in near constant pain what with the tendonitis anyhow. What's a little more, eh? Total cost of the visit: 3. It could have been much, much worse. I suspect that it normally would have cost more than that, what with the X-rays that they did. However, there's a little bit of history with this dentist that I should mention. It's a funny story. A couple of months ago my brother went in for a cleaning and they found a couple of cavities. He decided to get the fillings done by spreading them out between a couple of visits. He goes in for one, no problems. A few weeks later he comes back for the second one. The funny thing was that after the usual prepping with the dental hygenists, the dentist himself comes in and the hygenists leave. The dentist closes the door behind him. Starts chatting about all sorts of things, just kind of making conversation. My brother finds this odd, as the dentist's time is valuable. Finally, the dentist gets around to the point. It seems he had accidentally drilled THE WRONG TOOTH on the last visit. He did the one on the opposite side. Oops. Dude had really been sweating the whole thing in a bad way. Because on the one hand, he's ethically obligated to inform the patient of this fact. On the other hand, my brother had no idea of the mistake. And as soon as he knows about it, you've got the whole potential for a lawsuit. In fact, a malpractice lawsuit would be pretty damned likely. The good news was that my brother just laughed. I mean, the whole thing was pretty funny. The dentist was incredibly relieved. Here he was thinking that he's going to get hit up for tens of thousands of dollars and have his reputation potentially ruined. He was so embarrassed about it that he hadn't even told his staff about the mistake. And all my brother was asking for was that he drill the correct tooth for no extra cost, just completely letting go of the issue of the needlessly drilled tooth. So the bottom line is that this dentist is extremely grateful that we are not the sort of people who file asshole lawsuits just because we could get some money ought of it. And I strongly suspect that he just waived the cost of my X-rays as a little expression of gratitude. 16:04 - 2008-06-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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