If All Was Right With the World, Dental Work Would Be Free

Mitch is busy changing out the pick-ups in his new orange guitar so I have some time to go on a rant about dental work. So here we go.

O.k., so let me just say that I know there are more serious things wrong with the world than expensive dental work - war, famine, rape, murder, homelessness, addiction, sickness, disease, the list goes on and on. I also know that dentists deserve to get paid for what they do. I'm just saying that paying, and paying quite a lot of money, for a thoroughly unpleasant experience totally SUCKS and in my book, is a sure sign of adulthood.

Yes, today I went to the dentist for my second filling in a year. Yes, I eat a lot of stuff that is bad for your teeth (dried fruit, CANDY!) but I do floss and I brush at least once a day. I went almost ten years without a filling and now the universe is just sticking it to me. I also had a relatively unpleasant one hour scraping session with my dental hygienist last week. I just can't catch a break in the tooth department.

Today I went to my dentist (who is a very nice woman about my age who just had her second baby six weeks ago. The baby is in the office. He is very cute) and had quite the filling put in. It goes over two teeth and is practically a freaking crown. I think there's only like 1% of my original tooth left on the top. This was a filling in a tooth that already had a filling.

My tooth genes suck.

Anyway, while the experience was pretty crappy overall (took quite a while - maybe 30 minutes of drilling, had to get a second injection of Novocaine because I could feel the drilling (ouch), had pokey clampy things on my teeth), the fact that I had to pay $280 for the experience really took it over the edge.

I'm not sure about socialized medicine overall. Yes, I think we need health care over haul and affordable health care for everyone, I'm just not sure how we should get there. But when it comes to dentistry, there should definitely be a system in place where either I don't have to pay for it or I pay for it in a way that I don't realize it (hidden taxes, whatever). Because shelling out almost $300 after an hour of suckiness, really sucks.