akatonbo 1, Dental Phobia 0
I almost posted some days back about all the helpless rage I was feeling about having to deal with this dental chain that I'd gone to last summer when my tooth broke, because I'd realized that there was no way I could get the 2 root canals and crowns they wanted me to have done unless I split it between two years' insurance (there's a yearly coverage cap and it's not very high) or paid for most of the work out of pocket, and the latter was just not happening. Suffice to say the place is awful and I felt horribly trapped by feeling like nobody else would be able to see me early enough in January to keep me from being stuck on a liquid diet for weeks on end in between the root canals and the crowns. However, while writing the post about them to get some of it out of my system, I finally decided to do some digging around, and I found all I needed to see to make me decide to never, ever go back there again.
I am a firm believer than internet complaint websites should be taken with a whole handful of salt, because, well, people are dumb. (All life is sacred, we are all children of God/dess, yada yada. I work customer service. Every human life is worthwhile, but some people clearly didn't get or didn't read the instruction manual that came with their brains. I'll feel more charitable toward them when I don't have to answer their phonecalls anymore.) However, when it came to Aspen Dental, almost every complaint was one of two variations on the same thing, and they all started with the same thing I already suspected: that they were diagnosing things that were untrue or recommending treatments that were more exotic and expensive than were really needed. The ones that didn't end with 'I thought it sounded fishy, so I saw another dentist, and he said, "They told you WHAT?"' all ended with 'they did [some dental procedure] and afterward I was in a lot of pain and I had to have another dentist redo the work for lots of money'. Yeah, definitely NOT trusting them to do something as important as a crown, or, well, anything, except giving me copies of my x-rays to take somewhere else, thanks.
What I did not realize was how much of an effect making up my mind to never set foot in there again except to collect x-ray printouts would have on my composure when dealing with dental matters in general. In the recent past leading up to that point, I had been unable to have any sort of conversation at all with a dental office without ending up in tears over money or fear of the actual work or difficulty in making arrangements that suited me or something, and the last time I let them actually do anything to my teeth I was pretty much crying through the whole thing; since I decided I was done with them, I haven't shed even one over anything of the sort, even during the actual painful parts of the root canal I just had done today.
...I am not real keen on having to go back for a second one, since they couldn't both be done in one day, but. I'll live. Having needles stuck in my mouth is painful and scary, but only lasts a few moments, and the guy I ended up seeing for the root canal (the only in-network endodontist less than 100 miles from here, seriously) was very good about honoring my request to be given lots and lots of information (especially important because I spent most of the appointment restricted to making affirmative, negative, and '!!!' noises through a dental dam and couldn't ASK) as a way of making me less anxious, and letting me decide whether/when to have another shot.
Now I just need to figure out how to get through the probably two months between the second root canal and actually getting to have the crowns done by (hopefully) Andrea's trusted dentist. I foresee a lot of eating soup and grits and mashed potatoes in my near future.
I am a firm believer than internet complaint websites should be taken with a whole handful of salt, because, well, people are dumb. (All life is sacred, we are all children of God/dess, yada yada. I work customer service. Every human life is worthwhile, but some people clearly didn't get or didn't read the instruction manual that came with their brains. I'll feel more charitable toward them when I don't have to answer their phonecalls anymore.) However, when it came to Aspen Dental, almost every complaint was one of two variations on the same thing, and they all started with the same thing I already suspected: that they were diagnosing things that were untrue or recommending treatments that were more exotic and expensive than were really needed. The ones that didn't end with 'I thought it sounded fishy, so I saw another dentist, and he said, "They told you WHAT?"' all ended with 'they did [some dental procedure] and afterward I was in a lot of pain and I had to have another dentist redo the work for lots of money'. Yeah, definitely NOT trusting them to do something as important as a crown, or, well, anything, except giving me copies of my x-rays to take somewhere else, thanks.
What I did not realize was how much of an effect making up my mind to never set foot in there again except to collect x-ray printouts would have on my composure when dealing with dental matters in general. In the recent past leading up to that point, I had been unable to have any sort of conversation at all with a dental office without ending up in tears over money or fear of the actual work or difficulty in making arrangements that suited me or something, and the last time I let them actually do anything to my teeth I was pretty much crying through the whole thing; since I decided I was done with them, I haven't shed even one over anything of the sort, even during the actual painful parts of the root canal I just had done today.
...I am not real keen on having to go back for a second one, since they couldn't both be done in one day, but. I'll live. Having needles stuck in my mouth is painful and scary, but only lasts a few moments, and the guy I ended up seeing for the root canal (the only in-network endodontist less than 100 miles from here, seriously) was very good about honoring my request to be given lots and lots of information (especially important because I spent most of the appointment restricted to making affirmative, negative, and '!!!' noises through a dental dam and couldn't ASK) as a way of making me less anxious, and letting me decide whether/when to have another shot.
Now I just need to figure out how to get through the probably two months between the second root canal and actually getting to have the crowns done by (hopefully) Andrea's trusted dentist. I foresee a lot of eating soup and grits and mashed potatoes in my near future.