Hate, hate, hate the dentist

I had a routine dental exam and cleaning today. The dentist has not been my friend since I was a kid. I had my first orthodontist exam in 2nd grade where I started wearing a headgear. Then I transitioned to retainers and then a bionator (evil thing) and finally braces for about 5 years and then retainers.

You wouldn't know this looking at my mouth. Ok, maybe you would, I am no longer quite so buck toothed with an overbite and no gapping canyon between my front teeth. If that would have been my only three problems. Nope, most of my tooth problems were a lot less obvious. I had too many teeth on the bottom and too few on top, literally. My mouth was presented at many an orthodontic conference as a case study. I had no eye teeth, and then unidentifiable teeth on the bottom. My lower jaw was too small... yadda yadda yadda. They talked about breaking my jaw and rearranging everything, but my parents couldn't do it to me. Instead I had 12 or so years of orthdontia. (My child's jaw will be broken and rearranged should he be unlucky enough to inherit my mess.)

So the "no eye teeth" thing is what I am dealing with now. I was born without permanent eye teeth. I had the baby teeth until I was 16 when they finally decided my mouth had matured enough to go onto the next step, pulling them and inserting bridges. Misery.

Fast forward to 18 years later and they are falling out of my mouth, literally. They look awful as well. Today was my dentists last straw, they *have* to be replaced. He had been encouraging me to consider it for awhile, but a large crack on one has made it a more imminent problem.

Now had I planned this appropriately I would have arranged to have one done before '05 ends and the next done just after '06 starts. But no, I can't do that now since it is what, Dec 14th, lol. And well it can't wait until the end of next year. So I will have both sides done sometime in February it appears. Ugh.

$860 per tooth, 6 teeth for the two bridges. My insurance will cover their maximum $1500 and I get to hope I don't have anything else I need done next year since my entire benefit will have been exhausted for the year. I am on AB's dental insurance (anticipating this ordeal) and apparently they have a "missing tooth clause", meaning that if the tooth was missing before the insurance coverage went into play they won't cover. They might be able to work around this since I do have a "tooth" there, albeit a fake one. But if they cover it will also be a maximum of $1500. So we are nearing 50% coverage.

Oh well, I really didn't want that promotion raise for anything neat. Just new teeth.