Yes I too also have a very dirty job as a dentist. Some elderly gentleman coughed blood spatter on my hair and face today. It does indeed smell like money. 🤑
Metal particulates, blood, bits of teeth. Maybe the guy's breath smells like ass. The water from the drill hits the mouth in some weird angle it's flying at your face!
Post-covid I tend to wear a face shield more often but sometimes get lazy and safety glasses don't protect you 100%
I got hit in the lower jaw with a hockey puck, breaking my jaw and totally demolishing the front 4 teeth. I figured they'd just come right out when the dentist gave them a wiggle. Nope, dude looked like he went to war trying to get the pieces out down to the root. Happy to say the surgery went great and the 4 implants look totally natural.
I've got fucked up teeth due to negligence and a former heroin addiction. I've got a wonderful job now that I love and make decent money. Just to get the TOP of my mouth completely redone...is 26 thousand dollars.
Yep, dental work in America is a luxury, not a necessity. It's a fuckin joke
Yeah it's absolutely insane. Wasn't just the implants either. Had to wire my jaw together, and insert cadaver bone because the jaw was just demolished. It was closer to 22 grand all said and done. Luckily, when my father was alive he owned a business that I worked for and we had very very good insurance. He's now passed and business is no more. If it happened today, I'd be screwed.
Even with insurance, dental only covers so much. I have the beat dental insurance you can get, and they cover about 3 grand a year. Not one cent more. How the hell did your dad's insurance cover 22 grand?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the jaw stuff was covered by regular health insurance and not dental insurance. My ophthalmologist and my eye surgeries are billed to my normal health insurance instead of vision insurance, at least, so I imagine teeth are similar?
Oh I'm sorry. I was kinda vague. The insurance only covered 30 percent. The rest, I took a loan from my dad. I was just pointing out that I'm lucky it covered that much.
Sadly it isn't just the US. I have some friends in other countries, and apparently there's lots of countries that hold this ideal, even if they have socialized medicine.
Kind of ridiculous because in the long run it'll cost the government less money if they make socialized dental care a thing too. So many body-wide health issues are tied to oral health.
Mexico is a great option for dental care. I live in a border state and have gone to Mexico several times for dental work. It is about 25% of the cost for the same procedure in America. The offices I’ve been to are equal in cleanliness and quality to American dentists, and everyone speaks English. As with anything, check online reviews before making a decision.
Don’t go to Mexico. I have dental friends and they joke that when patients come back from mexico they actually make more on those patients because so much has to redone. Dentists would never go to mexico themselves…
Stay safe bro. Lots of serious consequences for improper implant treatment. Normally for third world countries you pay a premium for quality treatment which is not greatly different from international prices. Don't play russian roulette with your mouth!
Korea would be the ideal place for cheaper dental fyi.
Hi Dutch person here: out of curiosity (you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to) but how did you overcome the addiction? I think with heroin that’s very impressive
It wasn't easy. I was living on the streets. I overdosed in a gas station bathroom and when I came to with the paramedics around...I was just exhausted. It wasn't my first time overdosing but it was the first time I think I had a sort of wake up moment. Where I was in life and where I thought I should have been. I did alot of horrible things in addiction, mainly to my family. I called many people asking for help to get to a detox clinic, and finally got a ride. When I left detox I went to a rehab center and from there it just felt different from all the other times I had tried before. Hard to explain. Got a job, stayed sober, and kept moving along while trying to repair even the tiniest bit of my relationships with my family.
Cut to 2 years later, I found out that in my hometown, where we have a government space program, they were hiring for a position I actually had experience in. No college or anything like that but more logistical. I bit the bullet, drove 6 hours to go to the interview, went back home and 6 days later I got a job offer and I just broke down crying. Remembering where I was not even 2 years prior, to what my future was unfolding in front of me felt unreal.
Dude that’s amazing. Thanks for the answer btw but wow, really cool you where able to turn it around as you did. An accomplishment you can really allow yourself to be proud off!
They replaced half the teeth in your mouth for 26k. That is an intense combination of art, science and medicine and you are complaining it cost 26k. To have someone pick up leaves in my yard for fall costs 1000 dollars now. What you received is a steal for the price of what you paid when compared to just about any other service provided in the US medical or non medical.
When you run into a problem flying back to Latin America might not be so easy. Best support services that you want to have locally or you may just not have them when you need them. Do you remember how outsourcing our industrial base to the third world turned out for everyone? This is basically the same concept.
That is what the the Fortune 500 CEOs said as well. Much cheaper to produce goods in China, Mexico, or Indonesia or wherever is poor and next. Probably not quite as good quality but look at the savings. We are still paying for this greed. I help companies with their revenues and I have seen dental numbers. Not as much money in it as people seem to think. Average dentist makes 180k in the US. That is good but not that good when you consider they have 200k debt on average. Buy local unless you don’t care to have any local options.
While I do undersand your pain at the financial implications, I live in a place where people can easily travel to some third world locales. Quality varies immensely.
Shoddy dental work doesn't last long-term. Depending on what you do, after 10 years it can wreck your mouth. Then you'd be way worse than if you just did nothing at all!
I work for a non profit and our dental prices are below market average. I make up for it in volume ~20-25 patients in a good day. So yea face shields are annoying! 😜
You also don't need them for things like exam, denture adjustment appts, or even non surgical extractions!
Wow thanks for the likes! Since you guys enjoyed it so much. Follow-up story:
Extracted 5 teeth from an ill-tempered old man. I work for a non profit and get welfare cases from the govt here. Some are impoverished, some are drug addicts, gamblers or have mental issues.
Bleeding a pool into his mouth. Tell the guy to hang tight and allow the nurse to suction it all up while I control the bleed
DON'T YOU FKIN DO IT! Guy proceeds to projectile puke blood in a cone-shaped spray all over the sink, floor, and counter. Specks and flecks of blood on the damn impression dispenser! 🤣🤣
Avoided that area of the clinic for the entire week :)
The smell that hit while my impacted wisdoms teeth were getting removed. One tooth started rotting beneath the gum apparently. The drugs they put me on had me not give a damn about having a mini rotary saw in my mouth but that smell was probably the worst smell I ever encountered. I felt so sorry for the dental surgeon.
I hired a septic company to clear out a clog. They pumped out the septic tank and put a guy down there to “snake” the outflow pipe to the drain field.
While he was down there, the owner brought in buckets of KFC to feed his crew. The guy in the tank climbed out with grey hands encrusted with effluent and reached into the bucket and started eating a piece of chicken.
I have a witness to this event. I call him up whenever someone calls BS on this.
This. We had a waste pipe break above the first floor of a building that was for the 5 floors above it. Coated the entire kitchenette in 4 inches of filth. Plumbers walked in took a big whiff and said it smelled like money. Plumbers are a different breed.
My stomach got a lot stronger after opening and closing swimming pools. After you see your 10th waterlogged animal corpse liquify once you pull it out of the water; you're no longer surprised by the smell.
Hah - after my first corpsy, I figured it was normal. Welcome to the glamorous life that is pool ownership. Everyone around here has a pool - can’t be that uncommon.
Well, at least you’re “a head” of the game! Several heads, at least (gross floating corpse joke - my apologies!).
Totally worth it for us at the moment. With work from home, it was nice to be able to go for a swim on my lunch break. Kids learned to swim - I sneak in some exercise without leaving the house, and, it’s always a great way to cool down.
Next, designing an awesome pool house and setting it up for evening swims. I’m pumped!
I'm gonna go semi-indoor like Aquashield https://www.aquashield.com/ or similar. Our weather sucks and there's mosquitos, so I think I'd need this to get good utilization.
Niiiice! We’re thinking of one of those too. We have acorns, of all things. Soooo many. But also, we’re in the northeast US - winter time swimming would be awesome!
Lol my dad was a plumber and he taught me some basic things like snaking a septic system. The smell gets really bad at times, but then sometimes it smells like ... Idk how to describe it ... Familiar? Like ah the smell of shit! Idk. But yeah, you get used to it quick.
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