There's Extractions on the Right

The cost of all these crowns seemed crazy high to me, and I pulled a copy of my Schedule of Benefits (or whatever it’s called) and double-checked prices.  Blue Cross said that my crown should cost $280, not $1,097.  Why were they charging me $800 more (per tooth!) – were these crowns made out of unicorn horn? 

I got to the dentist’s office a bit early so that I could ask someone about my treatment plan and it turns out that Dr. Brown was basically trying to give me the “super-duper glow in the dark unicorn-horn” crowns, instead of the basic “yes they are a crown” crowns. I told him that I wanted the regular crowns because I wanted to take care of this now, rather than have to wait until I could afford the unicorn crowns.  They revamped my treatment plan, and the regular crowns brought the cost down to about $6000.

However, because revamping the treatment plan took so logn, it was almost 4pm before we got ready to pull some teeth. We ended up only doing 2 on the right. 

He numbed me up good, and went to it. I’d come prepared with sunglasses and my iPod. I cranked the tunes, shut my eyes and tried not to envision what they were doing in my mouth. 

It only took about 20 minutes I think and I was done. After he left, I snapped a photo of what he'd yanked out of me. Yeah, I'm gross.

He gave me a prescription for Lortab, I made an appointment for April 22^nd for the other two extractions, and I headed to the pharmacy to fill my prescription.

Now home, we all did “own thing” for dinner, since I couldn’t really eat anything.  I attempted to eat a Snack Pack (pudding cup), and it was one of the weirdest feelings I’ve ever felt in my life!  Half of my mouth could feel all the goopy, sloppy, slippery pudding, and I could feel nothing in the other half. I feared that the pudding would fall out of my mouth, but it never did.  I don’t think I got feeling back in my mouth until bedtime!

I did end up going to work the next day, though everyone said I was crazy. I felt pretty good – a little pain, but nothing that an Advil couldn’t handle. I had soup and more pudding for lunch.