subject: Finding Patient Dentists Is A Gem [print this page] There was a great dentist 10 years ago who knew exactly what I'm saying. Waiting for me to get numb takes a while but he had the patience to wait for that time before proceeding. He also paid attention to my x rays and conducted some tests to ascertain that the nerve usually receiving the shot for novocain actually spread the most efficient way for the anesthetic effect. But after I moved away from that area, I couldn't find anyone who would take me seriously, so I stopped going in for dental treatments.
An unbearable tooth pain pushed me to gather every courage I had to get past this anxiety. I learned about a dentist to check my mouth through my wife's friend. He still ended up referring me to a San Francisco dentist, who he said specializes in cases similar to mine, after the trials with novocain injection.
I did not have a hard time getting comfortable in this dental office because it is among the few ones that offer general anesthesia for every dental work. The friendly staff had me answer a survey form that had details pertaining to my actual issues. My tendency to flee was even covered in one section. It has a question on whether I postpone dental appointments always and I said yes.
General anesthesia was used on me to get all the needed work on my teeth done in one visit. Not all people can afford to have a general anesthesia every time they go to the dentist. The procedures have a lot of extra cost and I had to shell out more than $1000 on the anesthesia alone. What the need to do in my case is to do a prophylaxis and they had to get one side of my mouth ready for them to put on a crown. They trimmed down one tooth because the outer part was damaged and prepped another tooth for root canal.
I have lost track of the actual duration of the procedure. If I hadn't gone under general anesthesia, it would have taken four separate appointments, which didn't sound like a lot of fun. If you put the cost having local anesthesia four times plus taking four days off work in one side and one day of general anesthesia and a day's appointment on another, it will take less than a second to decide.
The general anesthesia did not make me feel awful at all, however I dozed the whole day. My wife once had four wisdom teeth cut out in one procedure under general anesthesia, and she was as sick as a dog for three days. The sedation was not paid by the insurance but the rest of the other workup was and it summed to approximately $1,000. Another dentist, however, was needed for one tooth for root canal surgery under sedation and this means for him an additional $1200.
So that year, my insurance was maxed out so quickly. I will readily go through the same process all over again if my mouth trouble restrikes. I don't think I would have managed to go through with all those procedures just by doing local anesthesia, I probably would have avoided that appointment. Having survived the major procedure, the rest of my visits will now just be cleaning and anything else without needles. However, I have not gotten over by dread of dental procedures.
by: margie madden
welcome to Insurances.net (https://www.insurances.net)
