Fifteen years is a long time to never see a dentist, but until recently, I’ve had to make due without it. My most recent job afforded me an option to get dental insurance for the first time in over a decade. Unfortunately, it turned out I had a fairly meager amount of actual coverage available through said insurance, and several fillings and one particularly nasty molar removal later, I’m back to paying out of pocket or waiting until next year.
I have been advised by my dentist that the state my teeth are in right now will get significantly worse if I wait that long. Already, the back of one of my front incisors has cracked open, and it is slowly widening. The left side of my mouth has a molar that is so deeply hollowed out by a cavity that if I try to eat something like almonds it may break open. A root canal and filling is needed there.
Those are the two most pressing things that I need to pay for. Someone has already donated $450 towards this, but another $900 is needed to fix both of these issues (the root canal and the cleaning and sealing the cracked front tooth) and the remaining fillings.
As a lower priority, but still important, I will need to somehow come up with another $1500 to get crowns for both of my top front incisors, as they have deep cavities that can’t be fixed with fillings due to the thinness of the teeth. However, I can probably just get by with fixing the previously mentioned current dental emergencies.
In the interest of transparency, I’ve included the invoice I got from the dental office.
