Dental Ouch

My teeth are terrible. I try to take good care of them, I brush, I floss, I don't crunch on hard candy, but still they have all kinds of issues. Last spring I had to pay out $1500 in March for 2 crowns and a root canals. And because it was at the tightest point in my mouth, I had to go back several times for the crown fit to be correct.

Yesterday, I had a routine cleaning and checkup scheduled at 1:00 p.m.. I jokingly said to my boss, "If all goes well, I'll come back to work after it, but if it is like last Spring, you might not see me for DAYS!". Um, be careful what you joke about. All was going well and the hygeinist was cleaning away when my dentist came in to take a look at my mouth. He poked around and prodded for a few minutes, and then got out this gadget that looked like a pen and put it on one of my back lower molars. A few seconds later, a picture of that section of teeth showed on the tv screen, with a nice crack in the far rear molar. That tooth had been filled back when I was in my early 20's and now the filling was failing and there was a crack.

I had 2 choices. Deal with it now, meaning go ahead and crown it. Or wait for it to break completely, and possibly have to have a root canal and crown or even worse, depending on how it broke. I chose to deal with it now. So, we finished up the cleaning, and moved me to a different room. I called my boss to let her know I wouldn't be back and we fixed the tooth. To the tune of $557!

Fortunately, I had the amount still remaining in my FSA, and I didn't wipe out the entire account this time. However, it is still a bummer to have that much gone in one fell swoop! And to add to the joy of yesterday, not only did I have considerable mouth and jaw pain last night, I had a raging headache from the laughing gas! This morning, I'm moving VERY slow as I'm still a bit hungover from the whole ordeal. Here's hoping today will be better (and cheaper!!!!).