Morning Thoughts---The Dentist

Almost two weeks ago, a cap fell off of my back tooth. Time to go to the dentist. Not my favorite thing to do. The first dentist I saw glued it back on for me and said I needed a root canal and some gum scraping to get another cap to stay on. All total, nine office visits and about six hundred dollars and no guarantees it would work. Or an implant to the tune of 1300 to 1800 dollars. I was almost in tears by the time I left his office, almost two hours later. He took forever to draw me pictures of my tooth problem and explain in detail all of my awful options.

I decided to try another dentist. I had heard good things about a fairly new place out in West Ajijic, the Dental Express. You can't miss it because there is a monster sign out front of a woman's mouth with a chili pepper between her teeth.

I will have to get the dentist's name when I see the woman who told me about him. I will be house sitting for her starting on Thursday. I can't say enough good things about him. Our consultation only took a few minutes. I told him about two teeth I am having problems with and he gave me his advice. He said that since the cap has held for over a week, to wait another two weeks. If it hasn't fallen off by then, it will most likely stay on for another year. I could safely go to Portland for seven weeks and not worry about it. His philosophy is to only do what has to be done. He said that dentists in the States do too much. They do too many unnecessary root canals.

Sounds like the doctors up there too. Everyone is afraid of getting sued if they don't do absolutely everything possible.  Dental implants in this office are 700 dollars. My friend from Portland showed me her implant. It cost her 5000 dollars in Portland.  What a difference in price.

So as of now, I am not going to worry about my tooth. If the cap falls out, he can fix it in one visit, not nine like the other dentist said. I am so thankful for this turn of events. This dentist didn't even charge me for the consultation. I will post his name in a couple of days.

The horror story of the other problem tooth is that I had not one but three root canals on it and they still couldn't get one root out that was calcified. It hurts sometimes. The dentist said that eventually my own body would dissolve it and it would stop hurting. Easy answer. I wonder how many dentist would have passed up the opportunity to make big bucks off of me with these two dental problems.