My real teeth represent a lot of life time dentistry work.
A while back I posted photos of my trip to the dentist and was undergoing restorative periodontist dental work including 6 weeks of deep periodontal cleaning needed to prevent serious development of various gum problems that often causes persons to lose all their teeth after age 55.
My saga of dental work continues on, but now at another dental establishment that does more procedures and one that my dental insurance has contracted with to accept what they pay according to customer expectations. With the previous dentist, I was scammed by their telling me they were a Delta Dental Insurance ppo provider when after all the work was done months latter they then presented me a bill for the difference between the insurance contract price and their approved price which is less than their real price.... oh yeah..... hundreds of dollars different.... What could I do since I didn't want to compound further problems and complain to the Attorney General about the deception and fraudulent practice.... I simply paid what they claimed I owed them, but vowed never to return.
Yesterday morning, with my mouth locked wide open via a large rubber bite prop, Dr. Edwards, a specialty surgical dentist at Southwest Dental Group in Peoria, Az, was routinely inserting a long needle syringe into my mouth's gum, deadening my upper left mouth area around a missing tooth soon to have my first modern dentistry dental implant. Oooooh, that smarted!
The missing tooth was extracted about a year ago (by him) leaving a unsightly problem causing toothless gap midway of upper left set of teeth. Food and medicine would trap inside the hole. That hole was created by a tooth had to be extracted, a root canal procedure done 10 years earlier by another endodontist became infected, rejecting the material the root canal used. That tooth with root canal also had been given a crown, that extracted tooth represented a lot of money (several thousands of dollars), now a loss, costing more money to replace it.
While Dr. Edwards was drilling a hole and placing the metal anchor screw into my jaw bone (the screw had to be special ordered. I had previously waited a week for it implant sized to arrive, I felt no pain but did hear a lot of disconcerting and distressing noises of jaw bone removal and metal anchor insertion. After that was finished, Dr. Edwards sewed up the gum tissue around the anchor and stuffed a wad of gauze in my mouth THEN his assistant asked what kind of pain medication did I want him to prescribe (I couldn't talk).... of course there was a 500 mg 4 times a day amoxicillin antibiotic prescription to be filled also and dutifully ingested at appropriate times until all gone. I sat in the dental chair while they took another x-ray and instructed to come back monthly for the next 4 months to have x-ray of the implant's bone around to see that all was healing as it should. Afterward 4 months healing time, I am to see a prosthodontist next door down for dental implant abutments, the bases of implantations. They transfer the load from the teeth to the dental implant. The implant is hidden just like the dental implant abutment, but the post of the abutment extends into the crown.
All in all, the cost is around $3000 for the dental implant, abutment, and new tooth. The process takes about 5 months time to complete. Additionally, there can be complications that I don't even want to think about but had to sign off that I was aware of them. There are dental implants being done in a day, but my dentist says their success rate is low and fraught with problems.... oh well, I have the time to invest in my dental work and fortunately for me also the money to pay the bills. It is not vanity but health that motivates me to keep my health clean, restored, and healthy as can be for my age.
My saga of dental work continues on, but now at another dental establishment that does more procedures and one that my dental insurance has contracted with to accept what they pay according to customer expectations. With the previous dentist, I was scammed by their telling me they were a Delta Dental Insurance ppo provider when after all the work was done months latter they then presented me a bill for the difference between the insurance contract price and their approved price which is less than their real price.... oh yeah..... hundreds of dollars different.... What could I do since I didn't want to compound further problems and complain to the Attorney General about the deception and fraudulent practice.... I simply paid what they claimed I owed them, but vowed never to return.
Yesterday morning, with my mouth locked wide open via a large rubber bite prop, Dr. Edwards, a specialty surgical dentist at Southwest Dental Group in Peoria, Az, was routinely inserting a long needle syringe into my mouth's gum, deadening my upper left mouth area around a missing tooth soon to have my first modern dentistry dental implant. Oooooh, that smarted!
The missing tooth was extracted about a year ago (by him) leaving a unsightly problem causing toothless gap midway of upper left set of teeth. Food and medicine would trap inside the hole. That hole was created by a tooth had to be extracted, a root canal procedure done 10 years earlier by another endodontist became infected, rejecting the material the root canal used. That tooth with root canal also had been given a crown, that extracted tooth represented a lot of money (several thousands of dollars), now a loss, costing more money to replace it.
While Dr. Edwards was drilling a hole and placing the metal anchor screw into my jaw bone (the screw had to be special ordered. I had previously waited a week for it implant sized to arrive, I felt no pain but did hear a lot of disconcerting and distressing noises of jaw bone removal and metal anchor insertion. After that was finished, Dr. Edwards sewed up the gum tissue around the anchor and stuffed a wad of gauze in my mouth THEN his assistant asked what kind of pain medication did I want him to prescribe (I couldn't talk).... of course there was a 500 mg 4 times a day amoxicillin antibiotic prescription to be filled also and dutifully ingested at appropriate times until all gone. I sat in the dental chair while they took another x-ray and instructed to come back monthly for the next 4 months to have x-ray of the implant's bone around to see that all was healing as it should. Afterward 4 months healing time, I am to see a prosthodontist next door down for dental implant abutments, the bases of implantations. They transfer the load from the teeth to the dental implant. The implant is hidden just like the dental implant abutment, but the post of the abutment extends into the crown.
All in all, the cost is around $3000 for the dental implant, abutment, and new tooth. The process takes about 5 months time to complete. Additionally, there can be complications that I don't even want to think about but had to sign off that I was aware of them. There are dental implants being done in a day, but my dentist says their success rate is low and fraught with problems.... oh well, I have the time to invest in my dental work and fortunately for me also the money to pay the bills. It is not vanity but health that motivates me to keep my health clean, restored, and healthy as can be for my age.
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