Thursday, October 10, 2013

Scanning Comes To A Mouth Near You


Look.  I love my dentist.  But our dates have become very expensive. 

Granted, it's my teeth that's causing me to have to see her, and I guess as I get older my teeth are just kicking my ass, but I'd much rather have a few nights in a luxury hotel than a cleaning. 


But I had an ache.  So I decided to pop in and see her at the beginning of the week since I was home.

She poked around, took an x-ray, and told me I needed a crown.

Holy thirteen hundred dollars!  Another crown??

Today I went back to the office to get it done. 

It's not all bad news though.  At the suggestion of my friend Marlaina, I signed up for a discount program at DentalPlans.com and will be paying several hundred dollars less than what I was quoted for the procedure.  The savings will only get me one night in a luxury hotel, but I can deal with that. 

And, because the office has the new CEREC machine, they were able to digitally scan my teeth, creating a 3-D image of them and from those images they made the crown right in the office.  No more temporary crown for two weeks and then coming back to put the permanent one in.  I was in and out in three hours.

Ed is very interested in the 3-D printing stuff that's all the rage right now and I have to say, if he saw how this worked, he'd probably be cracking a tooth just to get in there for his own water-jet-carved crown. 

My dentist is cutting edge I tell you. 



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2012: Go Ahead, Judge Me
2011:
Con Los AƱos Que Me Quedan
2010: Ten. Ten. Ten. A Perfect Score!
2009: Lighting The Testosterone Torch
2008: Eddie Helps The Economy Friday
2007: Talk About A Thorn In Your Side
2006: My Sentiments Exactly
2005: Mason? Dixon? Line? BELOW It.

5 comments:

Gil said...

Did the price go down now that your dentist has eliminated the third party?

The Daily Rant said...

GIL: Surprisingly, the price wasn't really less - the waiting time was. Last time I did this, I had to get the mold made for the crown, then they'd have to send it out and I had to come back in two weeks to have the temp crown taken off and the permanent one put on. As you'd imagine, with what we do, coming back for an exact date is challenging. I did us a discount dental plan Marlaina told me about, so it was ultimately a little less. But not because the equipment was in the office.

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