Forewarned is forearmed.Originally Posted by Oldherkpilot
Forewarned is forearmed.
There's nothing civil about this war.
There's a reason US dentistry is the standard of the world. Not saying there are zero butchers in the profession stateside, but the training here is vastly more extensive than almost anywhere else.
Quick story. I had a dentist who I liked. He took in a partner and then retired a few years later. I saw the new guy for a few years. My girlfriend now wife needed a dentist so I recommended my guy. We got married and bought a house where other practices were closer and more convenient but we still went to my guy. My wife got concerned about a procedure the dentist said she needed. It was some sort of scraping/cleaning below the gumline. She held off getting it. I went in for my routine visit and sure enough I got told I needed the same procedure below the gumline.
We asked around close to home for recommendations for a dentist. We went to a local dentist. My wife asked the new dentist if she needed the below the gumline procedure. His response, "what would make you think that"? She explained and the dentist was shocked that another dentist wanted to do this. Additionally she was told that there was a good possibility that the few fillings she had done by the previous guy were never cavities! Based on the fact that she never had a cavity before she saw this guy. Our new dentist said it would be highly irregular to start at that stage in her life. It's 25 years later and no fillings since! CROOK! Bad enough when someone steals your money but when they damage your body in the process.
This absolutely happens, and it sucks. My wife is a dentist and occasionally sees it when she's treating patients. I think it's like contractors. It's very hard, but not impossible, for a regular person to do due diligence on recommended work, so some providers take advantage of that fact and screw people over. What makes it worse is that most people don't judge their medical providers on the quality of work they do, but instead judge them on how much of a people person they are.Quick story. I had a dentist who I liked. He took in a partner and then retired a few years later. I saw the new guy for a few years. My girlfriend now wife needed a dentist so I recommended my guy. We got married and bought a house where other practices were closer and more convenient but we still went to my guy. My wife got concerned about a procedure the dentist said she needed. It was some sort of scraping/cleaning below the gumline. She held off getting it. I went in for my routine visit and sure enough I got told I needed the same procedure below the gumline.
We asked around close to home for recommendations for a dentist. We went to a local dentist. My wife asked the new dentist if she needed the below the gumline procedure. His response, "what would make you think that"? She explained and the dentist was shocked that another dentist wanted to do this. Additionally she was told that there was a good possibility that the few fillings she had done by the previous guy were never cavities! Based on the fact that she never had a cavity before she saw this guy. Our new dentist said it would be highly irregular to start at that stage in her life. It's 25 years later and no fillings since! CROOK! Bad enough when someone steals your money but when they damage your body in the process
I don't think most dentists (or other medical providers, or building contractors) are actually that bad, but there's almost certainly some that are.
The "below the gumline" procedure you had recommended is called "scaling and root planing", and it's a very common treatment for people that have poor oral hygiene (don't floss, rarely brush), but shouldn't be necessary for people that regularly take care of themselves, woth a few rare exceptions.
I had the exact experience. I went to a dentist who was the father of a guy I knew. Of course that wasn't going to get me any favors. So, the guy does all this fancy ass testing and panoramic viewing I had never even seen before. This was 1977...and I was a relatively poor federal employee...maybe a GS-5 at the time.Quick story. I had a dentist who I liked. He took in a partner and then retired a few years later. I saw the new guy for a few years. My girlfriend now wife needed a dentist so I recommended my guy. We got married and bought a house where other practices were closer and more convenient but we still went to my guy. My wife got concerned about a procedure the dentist said she needed. It was some sort of scraping/cleaning below the gumline. She held off getting it. I went in for my routine visit and sure enough I got told I needed the same procedure below the gumline.
We asked around close to home for recommendations for a dentist. We went to a local dentist. My wife asked the new dentist if she needed the below the gumline procedure. His response, "what would make you think that"? She explained and the dentist was shocked that another dentist wanted to do this. Additionally she was told that there was a good possibility that the few fillings she had done by the previous guy were never cavities! Based on the fact that she never had a cavity before she saw this guy. Our new dentist said it would be highly irregular to start at that stage in her life. It's 25 years later and no fillings since! CROOK! Bad enough when someone steals your money but when they damage your body in the process
The upshot was he told me I needed a root canal, a crown and various other work which would set me back about $750 back then. (Which would have been hard to come up with.)
Near the office I worked in in a rough area of Brooklyn was the East New York Family Care Center or something similar to that name...run by NYC Health & Hospitals Corp. They verified my wages and told me that any work I had would cost me either $10 or $15 a visit no matter what they did.
The two dentists I got were great. They were two African-American gentlemen who looked like they stepped out of a car with "Huggy Bear" in their orange and purple pants, afros, and smoking cigars. I was like...oh crap, what have I gotten myself into.
They looked at the x-rays, said "you just need a pillar and a post" (or something to that effect)...said "You don't need no root canal" and said they'd get me fixed up next visit. (I was the only white guy that I ever saw in this facility.)
So, I go back for my appointment, the receptionist calls me ahead of everyone else and I explain that I wasn't first. She tells me, that's okay, you're the only one here that needs to get to work. (I shit you not.) I thought I'd get lynched but nobody said a word.
Got me in the chair and a short time later I was out of there. All for $10 or $15. I called the dentist I had originally seen and told him...and he said "it's highly unusual to get a second opinion on a dentist's recommendation" and I told him that it wasn't highly unusual for a 25 year old with little money in the bank to spend his money wisely, especially when someone might be taking advantage of him.
That pillar and post or whatever they called it, lasted at least 30 years or more.
(I happen to like my local dentists, and the staff in their location. My lament earlier in the thread was simply because I believe that's where I picked up the Omicron bug last Tuesday...since I hadn't been around stores or groups of people for a couple of weeks prior. I don't blame them, it is what it is. But I think that's the case.)
There's nothing civil about this war.
Since COVID there has been an over-the-top concern for, where it came from, do I have it, and will I spread it. I get it no one wants to get others sick. I'm just saying I don't believe I have ever seen this level of concern before COVID.
My daughter came home from a wedding in Istanbul with COVID. I picked her up at JFK and spent 2 hours in a car with her driving back to CT. No one in the house got it, me included.
My son came home from drill with the Guard with COVID no one in the house got it.
My wife had COVID last Christmas I slept in the same bed with her. (She had just finished her Breast Cancer Radiation treatments and I was not going to leave her side.) I didn't get it. No one else in the house did. Prior to testing positive she had her hair done a few days earlier. my wife's hair dresser called her the day after her appointment crying saying she was COVID positive and had no idea the previous day. Did she get it there? Who knows. Likely yes, certain I don't think so.
I was simply making a comment on where I thought I may have picked it up. It wasn't intended to create any theater...or generate further discussion.
There's nothing civil about this war.
I got that... FWIW...
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
I knew that, B.
There's nothing civil about this war.
I gotcha! I wasn’t trying to drag you into anything. It’s just a topic that gets me going since I’ve been on the front lines of COVID since day number one. My job takes me in and out of every hospital in Connecticut a few in Rhode Island Western Massachusetts, working in patient care areas. In the very beginning one of my coworkers was practically burning his clothes at the end of a workday.
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