When Spending Money Hurts Like Pulling Teeth
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Photo by Conor Lawless licensed under Creative Commons
My wisdom teeth are coming out in a few weeks. In order to keep the cost around $500 instead of $1,000, I have decided to skip the IV sedation, and stick with just novacaine.
In Debt thinks that is crazy. I think that it is both reasonable and necessary, given the current state of our finances. We’ll see what I think once I’m actually in the dentist’s chair though!
Yikes! That’s dedication! I couldn’t cut back on something like that, I’m far too squeamish. Then again, I don’t have to pay my own medical bills, so I fortunately don’t have to worry about it. Good luck at the dentist’s!
Posted on January 27th, 2008 at 6:26 amDon’t do it without the sedation! My wife tried it that way about a year ago and it was miserable!
Even if your dental plan won’t cover it, check with your medical insurance. Your lost productivity as a result of being miserable isn’t worth the cash you’ll save going cheap on the surgery!
Good Luck!
Posted on January 27th, 2008 at 2:37 pmI got mine done last summer…all 4 wisdom teeth plus one other on the back left. I didn’t actually get a choice to do the sedation — just got the shots of novacaine. They did it at my dentists office…I guess that’s just how they do it there. At any rate, the worse part was sitting there for an hour with my whole mouth numb. I think the guy was overbooked that morning. I was awake for the whole thing and it didn’t take long at all. I was never in any pain — went and got the prescription painkiller filled right away…then just had to change the gauze in my mouth for a day or so and eat lots of soup and baked potatoes for a few days.
Just wanted to give you that info — I read so many horror stories about it online and am already generally terried of dentists…that I was expected much worse.
Posted on January 27th, 2008 at 3:04 pmI got mine (only 3) out at the dentist - novacaine only. The first two went out in about 5 seconds each -scrunch scrunch flip out. The last one was impacted (half imbedded in bone) and had to come out in three parts which took 20-30 minutes of grinding. The most painful thing was the strain on my jaws from keeping my mouth open for that long. That and the recovery time in the following days. If I had to do it again (I still have one wisdom tooth left), I would still not get the IV. The idea of chemically knocking out my brain completely is just not appealing to me.
Posted on January 31st, 2008 at 1:53 pm[…] I will be getting my wisdom teeth taken out on In Debt’s birthday, we’ll celebrate the weekend before. I chose a Sunday so that the […]
Posted on February 1st, 2008 at 9:55 pm