Dental Shenanigans
Dear Old Dentist Friend,
How’s your baby girl doing? Good, good to hear. Listen, I’m going to get right to the point.
As I explained over stiff drinks and Texas Hold ‘Em in Vegas, I haven’t had dental work in over five years. I know that I should probably have my wisdom teeth removed, a cap on the tooth I cracked in half on a stray guinea pig bone, and whitening due to enormous quantities of coffee and chewing tobacco consumption, but I’m kind of feeling jerked around by DDSs these days.
Last weekend, I was skimming the weekly coupon offers and ran across a great deal: $30 for x-rays, an exam, and cleaning. I scheduled my appointment, and drove to the run down strip mall where the office was located. After signing and dating a dozen forms, and paying my $30 in cash up front, a black man called my name. I know. Statistically, this is the only black male dental hygienist in the United States, period, so it was an honor to have my x-rays taken by him.
After the dentist reviewed my x-rays and teeth, a fourth party entered the room and showed me my plan. $4400 for laminate veneer whitening, $950 to cap the guinea pig tooth, $200 to fill my wisdom tooth, $155 for “Full Mouth Debridment,” and $125 for “irrigation”. I turns out the “cleaning” offered in the $30 package deal was a bait and switch tactic, not a real “cleaning” that we consumers of dental care expect.
So I agreed to pay the $155 + $125 for the real cleaning, and explained that I would discuss the rest with my fiancé. The scraping was done by the dentist leaving my mouth a bloody mess. She interrupted to negotiate with me over the pricing of the cap, and asked if she lowered the price if I would be interested in getting the mold cast that very day. When I declined, she pursued scraping with a vigor that bordered on aggression. After tearing the shit out of my gums, the hygienist sloppily buffed my teeth which reminded me of a five year old attempting to mud exposed drywall screw heads. The whole “cleaning” process took 15 minutes.
I hope, because this is your profession, you do not find this story tedious because now I have a few questions to ask:
When I visited a dentist six months ago, he told me that I had four tiny cavities in my molars, probably from grinding my teeth. This new dentist suggested that I was very likely to get a cavity any day in my wisdom tooth, and should probably fill it as a preventative measure, but said nothing about the other “cavities.” Do I have cavities or not? I’ve always understood cavities to mean “a sizeable hole” that 9/10 dentists would agree was either there or not there as opposed to, say, chakras, which would most likely be difficult to attain consensus between various spiritual practitioners.
Should cleaning take longer than 15 minutes, and involve significant blood loss?
Are all you people two bit crooks?
One more quick anecdote in case you are interested. The tooth pain that drove me to the dentist six moths ago turned out to be caused by clenching my teeth during waking hours. Once I made an effort to unclench my teeth during concentration, periods of stress, and vigorous masturbation, the pain went away.
All the best,
Mezz0
Dear Old Dentist Friend,
How’s your baby girl doing? Good, good to hear. Listen, I’m going to get right to the point.
As I explained over stiff drinks and Texas Hold ‘Em in Vegas, I haven’t had dental work in over five years. I know that I should probably have my wisdom teeth removed, a cap on the tooth I cracked in half on a stray guinea pig bone, and whitening due to enormous quantities of coffee and chewing tobacco consumption, but I’m kind of feeling jerked around by DDSs these days.
Last weekend, I was skimming the weekly coupon offers and ran across a great deal: $30 for x-rays, an exam, and cleaning. I scheduled my appointment, and drove to the run down strip mall where the office was located. After signing and dating a dozen forms, and paying my $30 in cash up front, a black man called my name. I know. Statistically, this is the only black male dental hygienist in the United States, period, so it was an honor to have my x-rays taken by him.
After the dentist reviewed my x-rays and teeth, a fourth party entered the room and showed me my plan. $4400 for laminate veneer whitening, $950 to cap the guinea pig tooth, $200 to fill my wisdom tooth, $155 for “Full Mouth Debridment,” and $125 for “irrigation”. I turns out the “cleaning” offered in the $30 package deal was a bait and switch tactic, not a real “cleaning” that we consumers of dental care expect.
So I agreed to pay the $155 + $125 for the real cleaning, and explained that I would discuss the rest with my fiancé. The scraping was done by the dentist leaving my mouth a bloody mess. She interrupted to negotiate with me over the pricing of the cap, and asked if she lowered the price if I would be interested in getting the mold cast that very day. When I declined, she pursued scraping with a vigor that bordered on aggression. After tearing the shit out of my gums, the hygienist sloppily buffed my teeth which reminded me of a five year old attempting to mud exposed drywall screw heads. The whole “cleaning” process took 15 minutes.
I hope, because this is your profession, you do not find this story tedious because now I have a few questions to ask:
When I visited a dentist six months ago, he told me that I had four tiny cavities in my molars, probably from grinding my teeth. This new dentist suggested that I was very likely to get a cavity any day in my wisdom tooth, and should probably fill it as a preventative measure, but said nothing about the other “cavities.” Do I have cavities or not? I’ve always understood cavities to mean “a sizeable hole” that 9/10 dentists would agree was either there or not there as opposed to, say, chakras, which would most likely be difficult to attain consensus between various spiritual practitioners.
Should cleaning take longer than 15 minutes, and involve significant blood loss?
Are all you people two bit crooks?
One more quick anecdote in case you are interested. The tooth pain that drove me to the dentist six moths ago turned out to be caused by clenching my teeth during waking hours. Once I made an effort to unclench my teeth during concentration, periods of stress, and vigorous masturbation, the pain went away.
All the best,
Mezz0
Labels: Emails
posted by Mezz0 at 4:50 PM
2 Comments:
I do love to see that the same high-jinks typical of the car business have spilled over into our mouths and their care. That "free" fifty point inspection has the same goal: "Let's get some asses in the seats, and give them chocolate enamas in the hopes that our intial generosity will spawn true revenue." And like most other things in life, best to pay up front in the hopes that no snake oil selling asshole would think to approach a situation honestly.
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