I am not currently made of money—just a little sinew and some fat deposits held together by a vulgar sense of humor—so I was not about to pop for Invisalign braces if they cost too much. But when I went to the Braces Lady to get an assessment, the total came in lower than I was expecting. So I’m getting braces. I am tired of my own teeth waking me up in the middle of the night. Yes. My own teeth, when they know I’m not paying attention, push my lips open and everything dries out and then it feels like my mouth is full of Legos. Not only that, but my lower lip and cheeks are all abraded on the inside just from contending with this ongoing dental insurrection happening inside my face.
Then the Braces Lady wanted me to go to my dentist first for a cleaning and whatnot. I love my dentist but sometimes she finds some whatnot and it all costs money. Since I do not have a good regular habit of going to the dentist, I was definitely due—so I took that in stride.
But then I get a note from the Braces Lady that I also need to go to the periodontist to see if my gums can withstand an assault from the plastic tooth movers. There were some concerning issues in my tissues. There was a possibility I might need some gum grafts to shore up the defenses in advance of the orthodonture. Shit, I said.
Not because I am afraid of dental work. I’m not. I just don’t want to pay for it, and I don’t live in Sweden or some advanced society, I live in We’re Number One America where we just think we’re special but our societal outcomes are not the best and the things that really do make us great are eroding every day.
I looked up gum grafts. Evidently they take a chunk out of the roof of your mouth and jam it in the area that your gums are remiss. And—and this is the part that concerned me most—maybe you’d be out about $3,000 for the pleasure. If you asked me, just a man-on-the-street sort of question, if I would like to fork over $3,000 to get some new divots in the roof of my mouth, I would have politely declined. Or I would have said “Throw in a rectal exam with a metal scrub brush and I’ll think about it.”
Because shit. I made my decision based on the quoted price from the Braces Lady and now things are piling on. I know how this goes. When the invoice comes, there’s the basic charge as advertised. Then:
Convenience surcharge: $30. [The convenience is the surcharge being added to the invoice here instead of in a separate invoice.]
Antigen panel to eliminate the possibility of my having acquired a rare fungal interloper that has only been found in Borneo (but these days you can’t be too careful) which, if present, could result in an infected tooth that blows up and distributes spores over the tri-county area.
Go-fund-me charge for saving Medicaid.
And a CDC-mandated charge to fund trauma care for dogs that survived being eaten by Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
By the time we hit the end of the invoice, at which we are encouraged to round up to the nearest thou for dental care for homeless veterans with a meth association, we’re talking real money.
So I was not enthusiastic to add this trip to the periodontist to my outlay.
However, my periodontist is my new best friend. He poked and dictated numbers to his assistant and took more ghastly pictures of my mouth and declared my hygiene sound, my gums heroic, everything on the up-and-up, and said he’d need to check my gums another three or four more times as the orthodonture proceeded. BUT the charge for today would cover all of those extra appointments. And that charge was $205.
You can’t get an appliance repairman to cross your threshold for that.
I once had a man come in to fix my natural gas fireplace and he spent ALL of five minutes reaching in there and flicking a button to reset, and charged $250. It would have been three minutes, but I made him stay long enough to tell me where the button was and how to flick it. Then I told him he could go flick himself, and I’ve done the procedure myself every season for seven years since.
I won’t do my own gum graft though.
Wow, that added up quick! I have receding gums. Heck, I’m WAY past gum recession. If I pull up my cheek I can see my tooth roots almost all the way down to where they burrow into the bone. Recession might be genetic from my mom’s side as she has receding gums and so did my grandparents. Or it might be overzealous brushing on my part and her part and poor dental hygiene on my grandparents’ part.
A bunch of years ago my dentist told me I needed gum grafts and sent me off to a periodontist. After a bunch of poking and prodding they told me it was going to be $4,000 (my cost, no insurance coverage for what apparently is considered a cosmetic procedure) and they were basically going to have to skin the roof of my mouth multiple times to provide all the grafts needed. Or I’d need cadaver grafts. That sounded good until I heard that left a bad taste in your mouth.
The deciding factor was money or the lack there of. I had just started a new job at Rutgers and was making good money for the first time in my life, which meant that I could pay off the debt I’d been accumulating for years. Adding more debt on top of that along with long term pain and/or a bad taste in my mouth seemed like a bad idea.
My dentist had initially pushed the gum grafts because he was afraid my recessed gums would lead to my teeth falling out and also because his wife had just had the procedure. He kept gently reminding me until one day he quietly said that her grafts had failed to take.
Another friend had the grafts with cadaver material in addition to flaying of the roof of his mouth and related the tales of pain and bad taste. He’s not a whiner, so I accepted that as gospel.
It’s been nearly twenty years since the discussion of gum grafts. My teeth haven’t loosened. I don’t have a mouth full of fillings and implants and thanks to better brushing techniques the gum recession at least in the front of my mouth appears to have stopped and reversed itself.
Jesus Horatio Christ. I don’t even want to imagine the nature of the bad taste in the mouth occasioned by cadaver flesh. Not that I am recommending this, exactly–but ignoring medical advice might sometimes be the best route to health.
I have similar — which is to say extreme — recession on the lower front teeth. I was told that the gums keep the bone alive, so losing the gums leads to bone loss, so I’d better get that gum graft using epithelium from the roof of my mouth. The first round didn’t take, so they did it again, and it worked. It wasn’t too stressful — I actually fell asleep during the surgery under nothing but a local anesthetic. But me having a small jawbone to start with, the bone loss eventually progressed to where the four front lowers got loose, and the only way to keep them was to wire them to the adjacent teeth, so they did that. That was all decades ago and I can’t recall the cost at all, but you can be sure it was less than it would be today. Somewhere along that timeline I needed orthodontia (second time in my life) and the orthodontist who was about to retire and couldn’t wait to be sunbathing in the Bahamas left me with an occluded bite, which stressed the teeth unevenly so that the cement holding the wire to one of those teeth breaks every now and then and has to be cemented back again. Two dental visits per year isn’t enough, so between dentist trips I see a periodontist, who says things look stable for now but if they get worse — bone grafts could be in my future. I did not ask for details. And now for the only periodontal joke I know: “The teeth are in great shape but the gums will have to come out!”
But you look so presentable in the teeny tiny picture!
Shucks, ma’am!
Wow, that could have added up very quickly! Gum grafts are no fun. I have had four of them. One a dozen years ago and three this past May. I definitely noticed the difference in my recovery between 12 years ago and now. Luckily all mine took perfectly. The worst part to me was the skinning of the roof of my mouth. That easily was four months until it felt better. And they were expensive! Good luck with the braces!
Thanks! But if the grafts help your gums–do they destroy or at least disillusion the roof of your mouth? The periodontist giveth, and the periodontist taketh away. That’s in the bible.
Where my grafts were taken from, up on the roof, there were no lasting effects I could notice after it healed. But it was so long ago I can’t recall how long the healing took. BTW mine was done by an oral surgeon, not a perio.
Wow! For a periodontist that’s a good price! Especially for multiple visits. Fortunately, I’ve never needed braces, but I get that gum exam where they read off numbers once a year. Some are borderline, but even if I was told I needed a gum graft, I don’t think I would get it, particularly after what I’ve heard here. Between having grafts taken from the roof of your own mouth or from a corpse, it sounds like a Hobson’s choice. I’ve had a crown put on a tooth, which was expensive, but the tooth was dying and turning grey. They are “watching” another tooth that has a minute crack in it, but doesn’t need a crown right now. As long as they just keep “watching” it and not trying to talk me into an expensive repair, I’m good. At almost 70, I can’t justify spending a lot of money on dental work. I do go for regular dental exams and practice good dental hygiene to circumvent further procedures. I’m on a fixed income, and what savings I have, I may need for more important things down the line.
WE know what you mean. Booze.
If you lose your teeth, you can’t really chew. Probably the best spent money is on your teeth….over the border in Mexico!
I can barely chew with the teeth I’ve got. They don’t meet up. I just mash a little and send it down the hatch.
Oh, my…you know we’re all in it together…why are eyes, ears, and teeth considered separate from the body which Medicare provides for?
I just got a $4,000 bridge to replace two teeth that had to be yanked out.
I also have had a significant issue with dryness in my mouth when I sleep, which I have spent years trying to figure out. My mouth gets so dry at night that the gums and down into the throat are literally starting to stick together. I also have a significant overbite and early on found that my mouth was dropping open sometimes when I sleep. I tried a chin strap which didn’t work due to comfort issues. I read where open mouth is often caused by inadequate nose breathing, for which I found these little silicone nose cones that will physically prop open your nasal passages, and that has been a help. Very cheap to buy, last forever, can be sterilized if you are into that, and also seem to help with keeping at least one nostril open during colds. Then I figured out that it was not just the bad breathing/mouth open for me, because my mouth would dry out even if closed. Like the saliva glands went to sleep at the same time I did. I tried Biotene rinse and gel but it doesn’t last very long. But I now have a quite useful solution. I use XyliMelts, which are little stick-on lozenges that stimulate saliva flow. They have xylitol in them, which I understand is actually good for strengthening tooth enamel. To a cheapskate like me they are a little spendy, but one on each side of my mouth when I go to sleep will get me mostly through the night with no dry mouth. And since I have to get up to pee at some point in the night, I just add some slightly cheaper xylitol lozenges called XyliDENT Dry Mouth Moisterizing Tablets, which don’t last as long but fiinish out the night for me. You can find the first one in drugstores now but the packages are pretty small, so I buy the 230 count bottle for the first one, and the 100 tab bottle for the second one online. It has made a world of difference for me. Just a note that I don’t buy the mint versions as I don’t want anything waking up my mouth rather than soothing it to sleep.
Nothing to add to this thread except that my long time dentist’s name was Crowe, which sort of ties this together with the last blog. I never offered him any peanuts.
This has nothing to do with my dental work per se, but due to a series of events I will skip over, I was once able to say to my dentist, in all honesty “Do you know that your dog’s mother’s owner’s roomate’s sister is my wife?”
LOL!