This has been a crazy week. With the full moon shining down on my little piece of heaven, things have been hopping. Tuesday was especially crazy.
During the morning hours, many things happened. A Landscape Architect stopped by to give me an estimate on the front yard. The loyal and realistic gardener arrived to fix the sprinkler line once and for all. $40 later, it was obvious he’d need to return on another day for more digging. The old line continued to crack with every repair he made.
A ringing doorbell announced the Fed Ex delivery of meat right to my front door. Steaks in a white ice chest of deliciousness had arrived a day early. The morning was rolling along, busier than most around my retirement haven.
Then, the phone call of all phone calls came in the middle of this flurry of activity. The dentist had an opening. Would I like to repair my crown at 2:50PM? This was the call for which I’d been waiting. Finally, my 20 year old gold crown, the last of its kind, would be replaced. At least the process would begin. This brought both optimism and dread because at some point, the tooth WILL fail. It’s a given. I hoped for one more save at the hands of a skilled dentist, only 30 miles away.
My teeth are a disasterous fail. VST always joked that he should’ve examined my teeth before marriage. It’s true. Born with very poor teeth, they’ve taken me on a carnival ride through the worst hairy-fingered dental hacks known to human-kind. All teeth have received multiple crowns. They’re short timers now, like me. Old.
It amuses me when people recommend their dentist. My first question is this. How many hours have you sat being drilled, filled, capped, polished, straightened, or extracted? If it isn’t well over 50 hours, you don’t know. So the office has the cutest pictures on the walls, or a beautiful fireplace and leather chairs. So the dentist has a computer and 3-D printer that spits out a crown while you wait. So what??? Is your dentist competent???????
My last dentist had that very expensive office. Soothing music floated through halls. With 20 foot ceilings throughout the brand new building, original art adorned every wall. Every employee was trim, tanned and perfectly model like. The chairs were the newest and most comfortable. Headsets for music were offered while your dental service was completed. A computer generated a beautiful crown while I waited 4.5 hours in the chair. All in all, the experience was perfection for the mouth and teeth. OR SO I LET MYSELF BELIEVE.
The little office I’d be visiting this time was different. It was a dental office with no artwork on the walls. The floor tiles betrayed any fleck of dust, utilitarian and white. A big office, the clientele were desert folk. Coming for many different reasons, they needed a dentist that would fix what was broken. There was no Keurig machine on the counter with everything from hot chai to hot chocolate. Nope. This was a PODO. Plain Old Dental Office.
Now, let’s get this straight. I don’t fear anything dental. Being knowledgeable after hours of treatment, I can read x-rays with the best of them. My concern was that the gold jacketed tooth would need pulling and and medication might compromise my drive home. I’d deal with it if the need arose.
Once settled into the extremely clean, modern, and functional treatment room, the fun began. A digital x-ray of both the gold crown and the computer generated beauty were displayed on the wall. Side by side, the old technology and the new. There was one glaring defect staring me in the face. Between the two teeth, there was trouble brewing. It was an obvious problem, easily identifiable. Either decay or a fracture was visible.
Dr. Mike finally appeared in the doorway. Adorably dental doctor-ish, he was ready to rock and roll. After a painless shot, we were on our way to done, until we ran aground.
After drilling for seconds, the assistant stopped him. He was drilling the very expensive, computerized tooth. Removing it, actually. The defect on the x-ray was decay under the improperly formed $2500 computer generated crown. The crown hadn’t covered the tooth’s surface properly. It was a fail before I ever rose from the very expensive dental chair five years ago. A computer is only as precise as the man running it. Obviously, Dr. Dimwit hadn’t practiced enough, because he generated a defective crown for me.
As a patient, learning that the dentist is drilling on the wrong tooth is a chilling event. This happened to me once before when I was 28, and it now it was happening again. I was there to repair the worn out 20 year old gold crown. Not my beautiful new computer generated marvel, now unrepairable.
“I came in to replace the worn and torn gold crown,” I stated.
“But this one has failed and you have decay underneath,” he defended.
“I signed an agreement to replace the gold crown,” I repeated.
“Hmmmmmm. Well, then. I guess today you get two for the price of one,” he said, solving the problem.
More wonderful words were never spoken! Just like that, this dental genius became my hero. If I couldn’t have seen or read the x-ray, I might’ve felt differently. But, the decay under the computerized crown was so obvious. He was right, it needed repairing immediately.
Of course, the procedure was not without added fun and frivolity. There just wasn’t a lot to work with considering how many times these two crowns have been replaced through the years. I got to see pictures of the active decay and pictures after the decay was removed. Dental impressions were made and gum tissue burned away. Nothing like BBQ in your own mouth. All in all, just more procedures added to my list of dental experiences.
Two hours later, I was done. Dental work is a strange experience. Although you feel the same, your mouth doesn’t respond in the fashion it should. With lip and tongue drooping to the side, I drove myself home.
To Dr. Mike’s credit, I did get two crowns for the price of one, fairly priced from the beginning. With temporaries and pain meds, I returned to Winterpast, exhausted.
The moral of the story is this. Pay attention to every service hired. Medical. Dental. Automotive. Even the Beauty Shop. These days, you need to be the Dentist, as well as the gardener, landscape artist, and chef. You need to be in the know, or else, you won’t be when the wrong tooth is prepared for a new crown.
Do I blame the dentist? No. He looked up , saw the serious defect, and got to work. When he saw his mistake made with the best intentions, he made the situation right. With the cleanest and most modern dental techniques, I’ll return to Dr. Mike. Fireplaces, leather chairs, and expensive artwork don’t qualify someone as a good dentist. Caring for patients, while working through unplanned detours, does.