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.