Well, no wonder my mouth was hurting so much. When the endodontist went in to do this second root canal today (bless him and his staff for recognizing an emergency and squeezing me in) he found an infection had started in the bone at the tip of the tooth's root. And because of that, he had to inject twice as much numbing medication as usual to keep me comfortable while he worked. Afterwards, he had me take a double dose of an antibiotic before I even left his office to get a jump start on addressing the infection. He also advised me to go get my prescription for pain medicine filled right away (Percocet) because he said I'm going to continue to have a good deal of pain until the infection is under control.
And the good times didn't end there!!
When I went to check out, I found I only had about $250 left on my yearly dental insurance allowance so I had to pay $700 out of pocket right there on the spot. Talk about painful! I just spent $350 two weeks ago when the first root canal was done....and that's not counting the money I spent at my regular dentist's office in early June when I got the two original fillings done that led to all this trouble! I'm disgusted by this whole situation.
So now I'm finally back home, and hoping the percocet will soon kick in because I'm hurting a whole lot. What an awful day it's been.
I hope by now you feel better Jennifer.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Yael. The extra strength narcotic has definitely taken the edge off!
DeleteOuch! Sounds like you're going through a tough time.
ReplyDeleteYes, it was a painful weekend and today has been the climax of the whole ordeal. Hopefully now things will improve!
Delete700$ straight off! I would burst into tears
ReplyDeleteI did, just as soon as I made it to my car! :(
DeleteOh My Goodness !
ReplyDeletecheers, parsnip and thehamish
Oh. My. God! That sounds terrible. (Side note: $700! That's about $1000 NZ. Dentistry in NZ seems to be just as costly as in the US). Thank goodness for the pain relief. Good luck and good wishes for fast healing, let's hope the tooth saga ends here.
ReplyDeleteDentists must all be rich the world over.
DeleteI sure hope the tooth saga is over with now. I'm thoroughly sick of it!
What an ordeal. I hope all the dental work for the year is done and the pain killers and antibiotics work their magic.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope things will be better now. My whole summer so far has been consumed with it.
DeleteI really sympathise. As someone who hates all dentists, I look upon them as no more than torturers. Hope the pain killers do the job (I'm also taking some, but for a different matter).
ReplyDeleteI feel a good bit better thus morning! Thanks!
DeleteOh no, poor you!! (And literally "poor you" if you keep having to fork out so much money for dental treatment!)
ReplyDeleteIsn't there anything you can do to get at least a part refund for the first treatment that caused all the problems?
That would be great, but the first dentist will never admit that he did anything wrong. He keeps saying that the two fillings were very deep and close to the nerve and that it couldn't be helped. But I think he was careless. I've had several fillings in my life, and this has never happened before. And for it to happen to two teeth at once.....I think he's just a bad dentist.
DeleteHe's also just filling in (ha!) for the new dentist in the practice that I use. The regular female dentist is out on maternity leave. Do he'll be gone soon. Which is something, I guess.
In a perfect world, the first dentist would be compensating you for the early treatment which clearly failed. In contrast, in this imperfect world you have been charged for the failure.
ReplyDeleteAnd charged dearly. We're not rich people. Over $1000 in a month hurts. But hopefully it's all over now.
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ReplyDeleteThat’s really awful. I don't know what’s more painful: having to get work done with that infection or having to shell out all that money once you got to the desk. I can say that even though it hurts today to lay out all that money, years from now you’ll never know all the money you would have been saving in future work.
ReplyDeleteMarco @ Natural Dentistry