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!
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