As I haven’t had dental insurance for the last couple of years, I bought a set of dental tools and clean my own teeth now. I also floss and use a Sonicare electric toothbrush several times a day, so there isn’t much to remove in the first place. You can get Sonicare components on ebay for about $20. I’ve also noticed that dental bleach dissolves every last bit of tartar on my teeth, leaving nothing for the dental hygienist to scrape off. Thus, even if you don’t have dental insurance you can still keep your teeth and gums clean and white.

If you need dental work or root canals, always seek out the best dentist or endodontist in your area, then work out a payment plan if you need one. The endodontist I used for my last two root canals would set up payment plans for people looked like good bets for repayment.

Be sure to locate the best professional in your area for what you need first, then work out the payment plan because substandard work can cause a plethora of problems and extra expense down the road.

We have a great dental school nearby, but they would expect me to show for multiple preliminary appointments 3+ hours in length, and I have young kids–I’m afraid the child care costs might eat up the savings. I’ll have to do the math and see if it would be worth it.

One thing I’ve learnt about problems, is that they don’t go away if you just ignore them (otherwise known, though falsely, as the “ostrich effect”). A personal story, with financial costs thrown in, exemplifies this.

this is a great post. I’m going to work on my resume now for the first time in months.

Someone who understands the pain! I have to remember that our bodies are connected in one way or another so if we let one thing go, its makes everything else worse. I made some appointments over the next few months – it will just feel better to get everything out of the way.

I have been letting stomach pains fester for 3 years. I was in college, and the campus doctor decided it was PROBABLY too-high stomach acid based on my symptoms. So I took Prilosec for a whole year straight before I finally admitted to myself that it wasn’t really helping. Then, my husband’s new job never sent us our health insurance cards (even after pestering HR for a year to give us some info!). We now just passed the waiting period for another new job and FINALLY have health insurance cards!!!

Unfortunately, I had to go to the ER last Sunday for a swollen lip… cause unknown. The ER doc just told me to take Claritin, it was PROBABLY an allergic reaction. But it was swollen for 5 days and never went down. That’s right. $100 to be told to take Claritin!

The truth is, I often let things fester because I find that doctors usually don’t take the time to test you to find out what’s really wrong… they just give their best educated guess and tell you to take X medicine to make you feel that your visit was worth it.

Has anyone else had this problem with doctors? It feels to expensive and like such a waste of time when they don’t discover what is really wrong with you. As a patient, can you demand they test you?

She wouldn’t let me brush her teeth. She didn’t like playing with hard toys. But everything seemed okay, at least from ages 6-8 1/2. Then she started slowing down. She didn’t want to play as much. She was less active. I thought it was just normal aging, but her breath started to really smell bad (instead of just smelling like dog breath).

I got the geriatric blood panel and she was cleared for surgery. She had some teeth extracted and everything cleaned and she is so much bettter now. She plays all the time and it turns out she likes hard toys now that she can bite on them. She was probably in pain for awhile, but she obviously couldn’t tell me.

My thinking on this is that yes, something could happen. You could get your dog’s teeth done and, god forbid, they might not have much time after. I worried about my dog not even making it through the procedure. But I didn’t want to do nothing, knowing that the situation was getting worse, and wait for a crisis situation to come, like it did for El Nerdo.

If you can swing it and the vet thinks the dog can withstand the procedure, I’d say to do it. You don’t want to end up in a position of having to decide what to do about this only when your dog ends up really sick or in pain. If you aren’t sure about the vet, don’t be afraid to get a second opinion from someone who knows that they will never do the procedure on your dog (and wouldn’t make money off of it).

Whatever you decide, I wish you all a lot of luck!

They offer a no-interest introductory period but if you don’t have the whole thing paid off in time they charge interest retroactively. Here is the explanation from their about page:

“Interest will be charged to your account from the purchase date if the promotional balance, including optional charges, is not paid in full within 6, 12, 18 or 24 months or if you make a late payment. Minimum monthly payments are required.”

http://www.carecredit.com/howcarecreditworks.html

Different opinions with my last dental issue ranged from “OMG better do something now and it will be expensive!” to “call us if it starts to hurt, otherwise wait six months and we’ll look again.”

Just came back from the oral surgeon where my poor GIANT tooth was taken out for $320 (I got stitches!). All went well and the pain was minimal (but we’ll see when the anesthesia wears off!). Back in 3 months for an implant evaluation– for now the hope is that the bone will regrow and stabilize.

Anyway, I also want to give a very big thanks to everyone who commented. This is all very encouraging, regardless of whether I get hired or not. Of course I want to get hired though–these dental repairs won’t pay themselves! (Unless of course I manage to make money writing about them, ha.)

Alright, I should go catch up with work. Many thanks again to everyone.

**PS – I rarely comment, but also loved this post!! Well done.

I also just did a colonscopy that I had been putting off. Two polyps were removed that were not concerous, but could have become cancerous. I have insurance, but this still cost about $600.00. Again, I had the money in my medical fund, but I still didn’t want to spend the money. Now, I’m grateful because $600 seems like a lot less money than I’d be on the hook for if these polyps had turned cancerous in a few years and, of course, sparing myself having to deal with cancer.