X-Ray Vision
Ok- So Mazur sent the x-rays to Gomes and we were waiting to hear back from him. In the mean time, I received another bill from Gomes asking me to pay the additional $500 I still owed. And it turns out I wasn't going to be able to make my originally scheduled appointment on the 24th, so I decided to give them a call.
Well, this time Sharon answered the phone. I didn't remember a Sharon before. I like Sharon. I told her I was calling to ask about needing to reschedule my appt- but I wasn't sure if I needed to reschedule or just cancel since they had sent the x-rays to Gomes. Her reply was "well, I can just make your appointment go away." I was hoping she'd have the same response about my bill. :-) So we made my appt go away and she said she'd have Dr. Gomes call me if I needed to reschedule. So then she transferred me to Charlotte to deal with the billing though. Charlotte looked at my chart and said it said I would pay $200. Nope. Not the case. So she checked with Gomes and he said it was fine and they sent me a bill with a zero balance and we are good now! YAY!
Oh, Vanity
Ok- so I was back at Mazur's office on Tuesday because they called to say that bleaching trays were ready and I needed to come in so they could make sure they fit and tell me how to use them. I have never felt so vain in my entire life. ;-) But anyway, I had my last coke on Monday at lunch to say goodbye to any dark liquids for a bit. I am trying to make sure I don't get too addicted to doing this and end up with teeth like Ross's on that episode of Friends. ;-)
While I was there Dr. Mazur came in to visit me. :-) He said he talked to Gomes about the x-rasy and that Gomes wanted to see me again. He also asked Gomes about the abutment. Gomes told him he didn't think I had paid for it before so Mazur could just do it. Well.. Mazur happens to have a copy of my bill from the perio place, and sure enough the abutment is on there. :) So anyway, they got into a conversation where Mazur told him that he thought I wasn't too happy about this whole situation and what's been going on. Gomes replied that he had no indication that I wasn't happy. So Mazur says to him, 'dude, she even has a blog about this tooth. And I've only read it once, but she didn't seem too happy about any of it. ' :) So now, Dr. Gomes knows about the blog too. That should make for an interesting visit.
The Interesting Visit
So I go back and schedule my return visit to Gomes. And that visit was yesterday. So I take a half day off, drive down an hour for a 15 minute appointment. So anyway, Dr. Gomes doesn't let on that he's had this conversation with Dr. Mazur. But he pokes and prods a bit and says it looks really good. Its sturdy in there. The x-rays look good. There's bone around there- it can take a full year for bone graft to fully integrate, but it looks good. But then he tells me that he wants to make sure I know he's not God, nor does he want to be God. But he did the best he could with the space and bone he had and that my root was like two banana's stuck together. ( Might I mention all the while the song "If This Is It, Please Let Me Know" by Huey Lewis is playing in the background. I love it when life provides the soundtrack for events like that! I thought that was kind of ironic. ;-) ) I say, yes I know, we all just want this to turn out for the best and the best it can be. So then he sends me on my way... says I do still have to come back to see him when all is said and done just so he can see how it turned out. He says we might want to wait a month before we put anything on there, but its looking good. YAY! YAY! YAY! Translate- we have permission to think about finally getting this done!!!!! Woo hoo!
And I have to say that maybe in the past I have unfairly represented the new location and people. This time, everything just seemed so much brighter. I don't know if it was new lights, a much more friendly Tiana, or just a brighter outlook on my part, but the modest accommodations seemed much more tolerable this time around. So I guess maybe I shouldn't have been so judgemental before.
Ready to Launch
So basically I guess we are ready to launch. I need to get in touch with Mazur (they are unfortunately out of the office until Monday) and get some things setup with them. I am supposed to bleach for 2 weeks. I have my regular 6 month check up the beginning of May- so hopefully while I am there for that, we can get this game plan rolling and plan the rest of it out. I am getting so excited! I just want this to be done! However, this IS me we are talking about. I am cautiously optimistic because we know I can't do anything the easy way! :-) I am sure while there are just a few more steps to take, life will continue to have it's way with me and God will continue to use it as a lesson for me to rely on Him.
I'll call Mazur on Monday and see what's next. Hopefully by mid May we can have this rolling and I"ll have lots more to report!
Until then... Keep smilin :)
Mindy
Friday, April 20, 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The Blog is Back in Action, Baby!
I know, I know..it's been a while. I am sure many of you had to endure the cold days of February and March just wondering what was going on with the freaky tooth- but think of it like a TV show- had the big cliffhanger and now we will be back in action for sweeps week in April and May.
Gomester Update
Ok- so something has happened between the last post and now, but at the time I did not think it to be blog-worthy, so I spared you. Well, turns out its worth sharing now to give you some setup for the rest of the posting. So A few weeks back, I received a bill in the mail from Gomes for almost $600! Obvious mistake, right? :) So I call and alert Charlotte to the billing error. She looks in my chart and can't see anything that would indicate it would be otherwise and those are their 'standard charges.' Ok- well, I explained to her that Dr. Gomes and I decided on a much less amount ($100) since he did not have to pay for the stent and there would be charges for some consumables. She decided she would have Dr. Gomes call me. Good idea. So the Gomester calls me and says, oh, yes, that is a mistake, they sent it in to insurance to see if they would cover any of it and they didn't, so it came back and got billed to you. So, why don't you just pay me $300. Um, no, we agreed on $100. Well, Gomes says he had to do more than what the thought he would (um... I don't remember him doing anything more than what he had to do- put the implant in and give me some bone graft) so there were more costs. But I stuck my ground!!!! No, we agreed on $100. So he says well, I am not going to argue with you since you have been through so much, so just pay me what you are going to pay me. OK. Will do. So I am expecting my next office visit with him might cost $200 :-) Anyway... not a big deal... we settled and it was fine.
Pearly Whites
So it was back to Mazur today to get my impressions for the bleaching trays. The good news is that it was cheaper than the estimate. Yay for me! These were not the user friendly impressions of the past though. These were the full arch, make you gag, tears streaming down your cheeks kind of impressions. My favorite. And I had a sadistic dental assistant doing them. She first started with trays and decided they were not going to be big enough, so she went for bigger ones. That's never a good thing. So anyway... these are the big metal trays too... and when she put the bottom one in, apparently she did not center them so well. There is now a nice layer of gum tissue attached to those impressions because the metal plate scraped the whole inner area of my gums while she was putting them in. She of course thought the tears were from the gag reflex and I had to wait 3 minutes before I could explain it to her. No amount of hand gestures and head shaking were going to explain that one. Then we did the top one. WORD TO THE WISE: Don't do full arch, upper impressions during allergy season while your nose is stuffed up or during sinus problems. It's not a good combo. I did good for about 2 minutes, and then I just couldn't breathe. So here comes gagging and tears. But we made it! She kept telling me to sniff through my nose- and I would have loved to do that.... but all that did was allow snot to block my airway a bit more. :-) Ahh... the fun times at the dentist. And then we were done...or were we???????
Jen-ney
So right as I was finishing my gagging and tears, my favorite assistant Jenny came by for a visit and asked me if these girls were being mean to me. I answered "yes" without hesitation. :-) So she asked how things were going with the implant. And she always enjoys a good story from Gomes, so I told her the billing story above. Incredulous as we all were, she decided that she needed to talk to Mazur and tell him about that. So we get Mazur fired up, and he decides that I should have some x-rays while I am there and he can see how things are looking. I ask if I do indeed need to go back to Gomes or if we can be done with him. So...Mazur stops by, says he is going to go get another patient numb, and then he will be back to show me something awesome that will make me sick- really sick. (Side note: you know, with Mazur, he's hip, so you don't know if sick is a good thing or back thing. :) )
Unscheduled Appointment
So my appt for the impressions was supposed to take 15 minutes tops. Is this a good time to tell you what you all should expect- my appointment ended up being one hour long. :-) So Mazur comes back and decides to show me what he has learned at his special training sessions in Las Vegas. It really was coool... basically there is a program that takes a 3-D CAT scan of your head and allows you then to create treatment plans and model them on the computer before drilling, waiting 4 months for bone to grow, and then deciding there's a problem. We would have been able to see the lack of bone, etc and all those problems we ran into before anyone did anything if we had waited a year. So that was what Mazur thought would make me sick...that one year down the road, we now have a different/better option that would have probably worked out better. Oh well. Too late now. I hope. :-) There is a potential for me to go have one of these 3-d scans done (in indy) if we have trouble coming up with a good idea of how the implant is working out though. We still can't tell if its going to be good enough or not though. I am going with, yes, it will be good enough. :-) At this point, I must apologize to the patient who was getting numb- because I am pretty sure by the time that Mazur was done with me, that patient might have had to get re-numbed. :-) And if any of you have an appointment with him today- I am the cause for him to be more than 30 minutes behind schedule. :) But he was cool with that. :-)
Final Verdict
So the real question is.. .do I have to go back to Gomes on the 24th? Well... they are going to send the x-rays to him and see what he thinks. Mazur says that he, not Gomes should place the abutment (the post that the crown eventually has to go on) because he has to do all the restoration on it too. So hopefully Gomester will agree and we will be done with all that.
So we are just getting things rolling again... Theresa will call me once she can get ahold of Gomes (it's Wednesday and apparently it's just he and Tiana in the office again and no one answers the phone. ) And hopefully we can get this done! I am sure the next couple months will provide frequent updates to the blog! So hang in there... and I'll keep you posted!
Gomester Update
Ok- so something has happened between the last post and now, but at the time I did not think it to be blog-worthy, so I spared you. Well, turns out its worth sharing now to give you some setup for the rest of the posting. So A few weeks back, I received a bill in the mail from Gomes for almost $600! Obvious mistake, right? :) So I call and alert Charlotte to the billing error. She looks in my chart and can't see anything that would indicate it would be otherwise and those are their 'standard charges.' Ok- well, I explained to her that Dr. Gomes and I decided on a much less amount ($100) since he did not have to pay for the stent and there would be charges for some consumables. She decided she would have Dr. Gomes call me. Good idea. So the Gomester calls me and says, oh, yes, that is a mistake, they sent it in to insurance to see if they would cover any of it and they didn't, so it came back and got billed to you. So, why don't you just pay me $300. Um, no, we agreed on $100. Well, Gomes says he had to do more than what the thought he would (um... I don't remember him doing anything more than what he had to do- put the implant in and give me some bone graft) so there were more costs. But I stuck my ground!!!! No, we agreed on $100. So he says well, I am not going to argue with you since you have been through so much, so just pay me what you are going to pay me. OK. Will do. So I am expecting my next office visit with him might cost $200 :-) Anyway... not a big deal... we settled and it was fine.
Pearly Whites
So it was back to Mazur today to get my impressions for the bleaching trays. The good news is that it was cheaper than the estimate. Yay for me! These were not the user friendly impressions of the past though. These were the full arch, make you gag, tears streaming down your cheeks kind of impressions. My favorite. And I had a sadistic dental assistant doing them. She first started with trays and decided they were not going to be big enough, so she went for bigger ones. That's never a good thing. So anyway... these are the big metal trays too... and when she put the bottom one in, apparently she did not center them so well. There is now a nice layer of gum tissue attached to those impressions because the metal plate scraped the whole inner area of my gums while she was putting them in. She of course thought the tears were from the gag reflex and I had to wait 3 minutes before I could explain it to her. No amount of hand gestures and head shaking were going to explain that one. Then we did the top one. WORD TO THE WISE: Don't do full arch, upper impressions during allergy season while your nose is stuffed up or during sinus problems. It's not a good combo. I did good for about 2 minutes, and then I just couldn't breathe. So here comes gagging and tears. But we made it! She kept telling me to sniff through my nose- and I would have loved to do that.... but all that did was allow snot to block my airway a bit more. :-) Ahh... the fun times at the dentist. And then we were done...or were we???????
Jen-ney
So right as I was finishing my gagging and tears, my favorite assistant Jenny came by for a visit and asked me if these girls were being mean to me. I answered "yes" without hesitation. :-) So she asked how things were going with the implant. And she always enjoys a good story from Gomes, so I told her the billing story above. Incredulous as we all were, she decided that she needed to talk to Mazur and tell him about that. So we get Mazur fired up, and he decides that I should have some x-rays while I am there and he can see how things are looking. I ask if I do indeed need to go back to Gomes or if we can be done with him. So...Mazur stops by, says he is going to go get another patient numb, and then he will be back to show me something awesome that will make me sick- really sick. (Side note: you know, with Mazur, he's hip, so you don't know if sick is a good thing or back thing. :) )
Unscheduled Appointment
So my appt for the impressions was supposed to take 15 minutes tops. Is this a good time to tell you what you all should expect- my appointment ended up being one hour long. :-) So Mazur comes back and decides to show me what he has learned at his special training sessions in Las Vegas. It really was coool... basically there is a program that takes a 3-D CAT scan of your head and allows you then to create treatment plans and model them on the computer before drilling, waiting 4 months for bone to grow, and then deciding there's a problem. We would have been able to see the lack of bone, etc and all those problems we ran into before anyone did anything if we had waited a year. So that was what Mazur thought would make me sick...that one year down the road, we now have a different/better option that would have probably worked out better. Oh well. Too late now. I hope. :-) There is a potential for me to go have one of these 3-d scans done (in indy) if we have trouble coming up with a good idea of how the implant is working out though. We still can't tell if its going to be good enough or not though. I am going with, yes, it will be good enough. :-) At this point, I must apologize to the patient who was getting numb- because I am pretty sure by the time that Mazur was done with me, that patient might have had to get re-numbed. :-) And if any of you have an appointment with him today- I am the cause for him to be more than 30 minutes behind schedule. :) But he was cool with that. :-)
Final Verdict
So the real question is.. .do I have to go back to Gomes on the 24th? Well... they are going to send the x-rays to him and see what he thinks. Mazur says that he, not Gomes should place the abutment (the post that the crown eventually has to go on) because he has to do all the restoration on it too. So hopefully Gomester will agree and we will be done with all that.
So we are just getting things rolling again... Theresa will call me once she can get ahold of Gomes (it's Wednesday and apparently it's just he and Tiana in the office again and no one answers the phone. ) And hopefully we can get this done! I am sure the next couple months will provide frequent updates to the blog! So hang in there... and I'll keep you posted!
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