Catching Up

Yes, I am still blogging!  It's just been pretty busy and I don't always have the time.

I took last Friday and Monday off, I really needed a break and it was slow enough at work so I took some vacation time.  Friday was nice, I went back to bed after Bill left for work at 6:00 a.m. and didn't get up again until 7:00.  I ran a couple of errands, shopped, got lunch out and made a crockpot full of soup.  The weekend was fun, Otter and I went to the flea market at the Tulsa Fair Grounds and had fun.  We didn't buy much, but we had a lot of fun.  We had lunch at the Mexican place that Bill and I found a few months ago and went to a thrift store along with a junktique place.  Sunday was laundry and stuff around the house then pizza with Bill.

Monday was not so fun.  I went back to bed when Bill left and slept until 7:30, which was nice.  But the day went downhill pretty fast.

Otter thought that her crown was loose and the dentist could see her at 11:30.  She came over and got her laundry going, and I went to Braum's to get breakfast for us.  When we got to the dentist, it stopped being a fun day.

The dentist said that her crown is loose because the tooth underneath it is broken.  And, by the way, she needs fillings in quite a few teeth and the estimate is over $7,000.00!  The treatment plan includes a bridge on her front top two teeth - which means that the over $2,000.00 we paid for the crown was basically wasted.

Also, it turned out that the dentist never did the exam and cleaning she was supposed to get when we first went to them.  And on Monday, Otter said that the dentist actually only spent long enough to come in and say hello and then one of the assistants did the x-ray.  We are not really sure just how much work she actually needs and we will most likely not go back to that dentist.

We went to him originally because the dentist we've seen for several years retired and when it was time to get another cleaning, Otter had what she thought might be a cavity starting.  We got an ad in the mail with coupons for a free cleaning with the purchase of an x-ray, so that's where we went.  I didn't realize until just recently that she never got that cleaning.  And that the dentist rushed that time, too.  When we were there last Monday, the clerk was very pushy that we had to schedule the work right away and she also pushed the credit plan they have - which we used last time and then closed it when we paid it off.  She couldn't seem to understand why anyone would ever close a credit account out!  Maybe the 25% interest it would have charged if we'd kept it?

We decided to call the previous dentist's office, someone bought her practice but we wanted a closer dentist to where we live.  But they still have her records and they can see her in 2 weeks.  I didn't tell them everything, just that she hadn't had a cleaning in a while because the dentist we went to after that didn't do it and I didn't know until recently, and I also told them that she'd gotten a crown there but that it felt loose.  Part of what we do in that type of a situation, which also applies to auto mechanics, is to see just what they tell us is actually needed in case we've been told wrong and it's also a way to be sure that the dr/dentist/mechanic/whatever is thorough.  So we'll see what the new/old dentist says and then go from there.  I do think she probably does need at least some work, and it may turn out that she does need what the closer dentist said she does.  But we won't be back to the closer dentist, either way.

We're also going to see what kind of a discount or price break we can get if we pay for it outright.  But that isn't really going to be the deciding factor.  And since Otter has the decalcification problem that I passed down to her from my mother's side of the family and it is worse now, she's going to have to be really careful in the future and keep a close eye on her teeth.  She's in for some unpleasant times in the near future and she's also allergic to codeine, which is the main pain pill for things like that.  She's pretty much limited to tylenol!  I forsee cooking a lot of potato soup and similar meals in my future.