Dentists it’s hard to find a good one, but I think I have.
Approximately 7 years ago when we moved to our current home we started using a local dentist. He’s been OK, certainly gentle enough with cleanings and what not, but it just wasn’t ‘great’. The office was a bit dated equipment wise, or at least it seemed that way to me.
Throughout my life I’ve had more than my fair share of dental work. I inherited my mother’s ‘soft’ teeth and it always seemed like I couldn’t get out of a dental visit without some cavity filling or something.
Over the last couple years though, I’ve not needed anything past your basic cleaning. Since most of my mouth is mostly metal at this point, maybe that’s not out of the ordinary.
Then about 3 years ago, I ended up with a sensitive tooth, no I take that back, a very sensitive tooth at times. Ever visit to the dentist I’d point it out to him and he’d poke around and take some vintage X-rays. But he could never find anything. He said it’s probably cracked somewhere and I just can’t see it. It will break one day then we’ll fix it.
Well three years later and it was still sensitive, usually when biting down on something hard like a nut or when you get into a steak and find something a bit tough.
On my last visit there I was pretty adamant about getting this fixed, but of course he couldn’t really find the root cause. Again, he said it would break if it was a crack. I decided then I was going to find a new dentist.
Well no less than a week later, it happened. The entire inside half of the tooth came off and it wasn’t a lot of fun. I lived with it for a couple days maybe a couple weeks while trying to figure out what to do about it. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going back to the same guy who a week prior couldn’t figure it out.
About a week after that while chewing some gum I pulled a big junk of filling out of what was left of the tooth. Things only went downhill from there.
I did some digging on our insurance website and found a pretty nice dentist nearby. I made an appointment and went in for a visit. This place was very new and very modern. All of the equipment was great. They took x-rays and immediately showed me the results on an LCD screen in the same room. The tooth was savable but needed a crown. They made a temporary repair and things were better. There was only one problem. I don’t do Novocain, and they don’t do gas. I’m not talking about knock you out kind of stuff, just nitrous or whatever they give you that lest you float around the room. Yeah you still feel that they are working on you and at times it stings a bit, but the bottom line is you don’t care.
So the quest for another dentist began. I asked around the office at work and got a referral, then an appointment.
Two days later and $800 lighter I had a temporary crown, and all the prep work done.
It worked out well. Dr Buchholz did a great job. The office is nice and up to date. While they aren’t as ‘techy’ as the dentist I originally visited, all went really well.
I had the actual crown put on this morning and things went pretty smoothly. I would not hesitate to recommend Dr. Buchholz.
Oh, and no novocain was required. 🙂