More Medical
This time, of the dental variety.
It's not a huge secret that my dental situation has generally been pretty bad for A Long Time™.
Part of this is entirely my fault, by way of my depression. When the big black dog starts to get bigger than a shoulder-sitting stuffed animal, one of the first things to go after social interaction is the whole taking care of myself thing. Even being medicated doesn't stop these swaths from happening.
And now I'm paying for it.
The run-down, upon verifying the paperwork this morning, is as follows:
5 crowns
4 root canals
2 abceses--currently on meds to help get those to a manageable point.
1 extraction
... and a crap-ton of smaller fillings
If you're queezey over the work to be done, you'll be vomitting over the price tag.
Had I not made the option to get $120 from family to buy the membership for the dental office, the price tag of all this is just shy of 20 grand. Mercifully, the membership fee helps cut that total almost in half. Still a scary number, for sure. But it's far better than the first scary number, and I don't have to do this all at once. I do in fact get to spread this out a bit. Which is good, because financially, I'm already screwed enough as it is, and family on the whole isn't doing much better.
The office I'm seeing for all of this doesn't take medicaid. However, the office I did get in to that does take medicaid was... Not Good™. While I was there, they numbed someone up to do some work that they suddenly decided they couldn't do so they told the guy to leave and reschedule. There was also a woman in the waiting area with tears pouring out of her eyes while she sat there in agony with some sort of dental emergency--the clinic is supposedly a dental emergency one--and she was told she'd have to wait til the end of the day because no one was free to help her out. Nevermind the fact that there were plenty of dental assistants who could have gotten the poor woman started in one of the several free chairs in the actual patient area...
Yeah. Decided promptly to NOT go there again. This is in addition to them telling me that there was nothing they could do to save the two broken teeth I have and that both would have to be pulled end of story. They gave me no options for what could be done after that point. They didn't even give me a full picture of all the work needed. Just "well, we need to pull those two broken ones and then we can do a cleaning".
New dental office was far better. The xrays they took were clean and clear on the first go, and the doctor explained all the work that needed to be done and the best way to go about doing it. They covered all the details that were involved, and showed me all the stuff the other clinic missed.
So yeah, it's not covered by medicaid. But you know what, I'm not that upset about that part because I know that this new clinic will actually do a good job.
TLDR: whole lot of work goin' on.
It's not a huge secret that my dental situation has generally been pretty bad for A Long Time™.
Part of this is entirely my fault, by way of my depression. When the big black dog starts to get bigger than a shoulder-sitting stuffed animal, one of the first things to go after social interaction is the whole taking care of myself thing. Even being medicated doesn't stop these swaths from happening.
And now I'm paying for it.
The run-down, upon verifying the paperwork this morning, is as follows:
5 crowns
4 root canals
2 abceses--currently on meds to help get those to a manageable point.
1 extraction
... and a crap-ton of smaller fillings
If you're queezey over the work to be done, you'll be vomitting over the price tag.
Had I not made the option to get $120 from family to buy the membership for the dental office, the price tag of all this is just shy of 20 grand. Mercifully, the membership fee helps cut that total almost in half. Still a scary number, for sure. But it's far better than the first scary number, and I don't have to do this all at once. I do in fact get to spread this out a bit. Which is good, because financially, I'm already screwed enough as it is, and family on the whole isn't doing much better.
The office I'm seeing for all of this doesn't take medicaid. However, the office I did get in to that does take medicaid was... Not Good™. While I was there, they numbed someone up to do some work that they suddenly decided they couldn't do so they told the guy to leave and reschedule. There was also a woman in the waiting area with tears pouring out of her eyes while she sat there in agony with some sort of dental emergency--the clinic is supposedly a dental emergency one--and she was told she'd have to wait til the end of the day because no one was free to help her out. Nevermind the fact that there were plenty of dental assistants who could have gotten the poor woman started in one of the several free chairs in the actual patient area...
Yeah. Decided promptly to NOT go there again. This is in addition to them telling me that there was nothing they could do to save the two broken teeth I have and that both would have to be pulled end of story. They gave me no options for what could be done after that point. They didn't even give me a full picture of all the work needed. Just "well, we need to pull those two broken ones and then we can do a cleaning".
New dental office was far better. The xrays they took were clean and clear on the first go, and the doctor explained all the work that needed to be done and the best way to go about doing it. They covered all the details that were involved, and showed me all the stuff the other clinic missed.
So yeah, it's not covered by medicaid. But you know what, I'm not that upset about that part because I know that this new clinic will actually do a good job.
TLDR: whole lot of work goin' on.