So I cemented a crown on today, which is a bit unique. Here in Non-Profit Dental World, crowns (bridges, implants, etc) are a bit of a luxury. If someone comes to us and has a boat load of "bombed out" teeth, we can't just go and do root canals and crowns and all that jazz that most of you who are middle aged or older are familiar with, dentally.
It's more cost-effective (and the best use of OUR resources) to fill and save teeth we can, extract teeth we can't and then fabricate a partial denture (usually with a metal frame) to restore function and esthetics to some degree.
Of course, taking a denture out of your mouth to clean at night isn't the best thing with which you can saddle someone. But I can do one for about $340 for folks on the sliding-fee scale. Compared to $2500 or so for a bridge that replaces just ONE tooth, that's a great deal.
However, if someone comes in who ISN'T missing teeth, and, for some reason, has ONE bombed out tooth... Well, you can't say, Oh, sorry, let's extract and put in a partial for one tooth; that's crazy. So we do some root canals and so forth there.
Anyway, I finally finished an upper molar (#3 for dr hank and the rest of you) and cemented it. Everything worked well. No adjustment (insert plug for Captek here!) needed. The young man who is the patient went out to his mom (who paid for it!) and I asked her, Hey, what do you think?
She said, "Well... huh... I'm not even sure what I'm looking at; it looks normal."
I said, "That's RIGHT!" It's not what it looks like; it's what it doesn't look like, which is FAKE. So that's gratifying.
Thanks to Don, Hank and anyone else who's reading - if you're out there, leave a note!
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3 comments:
Hey Nate! This is so you! I am getting a huge kick out of this while I am not doing any work! You have sweet skills, (Napoleon's quote!) Keep up the good work! Aprel
The fun thing here is to watch you guys play off each other. Aprel (a social worker) is in Massachusetts, and she and Hank both love Napoleon; I think she'd like Rev Don - both she and Christy would love King Ave Church, i'm sure... And Don would probably get along as well with Hank (a Calvin grad) as he did with me, as we have similar backgrounds in undergrad. Don is in Ohio and Hank in Idaho. I feel so connected to my community... hmm.
It's nice to have another source of nc invisalign information.Truly, Paz nc invisalign
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