Well, I was supposed to go in for an implant some time ago.  Unfortunately, when I went to set up the direct withdrawal from my paycheck with the “business office” they came back and said they were going to withdraw $4600 over the life of the withdrawal period.

I said “wait a minute”, the estimate I have says only $2500 dollars over the period.  At that point she pointed out that the numbers in the textual part of the estimate were only example numbers and not actually my numbers.  Apparently my bad!  Would it have killed them to just punch in my numbers instead of some fake estimate and getting my hopes up.

There is a big difference in $2500 and $4600.  I can get my Maryland bridge cemented in a whole bunch more times for that price.

Of course, not more than 6 weeks later, my bridge falls out again.  Not surprising though.  The last dentist had put it in somewhat temporarily because he knew that I was going in for the implant and we were hoping to re-use the bridge so he didn’t cement it as well as he could have.

This time I called around and found a dentist that wasn’t going to charge for an “emergency examination” and would just do the re-cement.  I am very happy that I did because he actually did something different that the last 10 dentists haven’t been doing and also took the cementing one step farther.

The thing he did different was actually took the old cement off the back of my teeth that the bridge attaches to.  It’s been a long time since a dentist did that during the re-cement.  They always said they didn’t want to because they couldn’t tell where the cement ended and the tooth enamel began.  For whatever reason, this dentist could.  Although, I think that he had more experience at age 45 or so than the last 5 all put together.

The special thing he did was to cement the bridge from the front of my teeth also.  First he cemented the bridge as all others have done with the cement on the wings in the back of the front teeth.  Then when that was done, he cemented the bridge in the front by putting cement in between the two teeth that the bridge attaches to.

At first I was sure if it would be OK because it was different not being able to see a tooth definition between the front 3 teeth.  There’s a little definition there but it is mostly cement that is visible.  He said he could add a little more definition later if I decided that I wanted it.  At this point I probably won’t just to see if will stay longer.  And you really can’t tell unless I smile really wide and you are only a foot or two in front of me.

I’ll be extremely satisfied if this cementing method lasts me a year.  The last few have only lasted 2-3 months and that is with me being very careful when biting and chewing.

As far as the implant, that is on hold as I test out this cementing.  Perhaps I’ll do it next year but I have to be more prepared to pay the extra $2100 dollars over what I thought my original cost was going to be.  I think I’ll also shop around a little more and see if I can get it done for less by not going through my employer.