“Hey! I’m hanging out with some friends in Brooklyn tomorrow, wanna come?”
“Oh man, I’ve got a root canal that day, haha.”
“Oh, great! So you can make it?”
“Yep!”
This is how this conversation would go today, in 2016. Because as I found out this week, root canals are no big.
It all started this past September. My roommate brought home tortilla chips from Chipotle and allowed me to indulge. When I chewed them, though, it felt like the little granular bits of chip were getting stuck in my teeth and it hurt. After a couple weeks of this, I decided to get them checked out. My teeth, not the chips. So I went to the dentist. A lovely dentist, very advanced, very nice, I loved the girl who did my cleaning. Then BAM I needed a root canal. It had nothing to do with the pain I was experiencing, but they found it.
I was whisked away to their Insurance specialist. The Root Canal was gonna cost $3800, and being that my insurance is The Worst(tm) they would only cover $1000 of it. So it would cost $2800 in the end. Um… great? They had payment plans. Um… super? And I should also get Invisalign. Wait, what? Apparently that was the cause of the pain in my molars. (it wasn’t.) This aggravated the used-car-salesman sensor in my brain. So I left without making another appointment. I was gonna weigh my options.
Lose a tooth or pay a fortune. Live with pain, or pay the man. A Sophie’s Choice if ever there was one. I posted about it on Facebook and got some advice from a friend of mine in dental school. He told me that I could go to Massachusetts where prices were almost assuredly lower and where he was studying to be a dentist. I could maybe even go to him! I called my mother’s dentist in Mass, and the lovely receptionist quoted me $2275, plus trips to MA. Not that much better. But so friendly! I started a spreadsheet (cause that’s what I do) and compared plans. Not that much of a difference. So I asked my dentist friend how much it would cost at Tufts, $1500.
These are actually my teeth.
He totally won. He called me about a week later and asked if I could come in to see him the next day. From New York to Boston. Hmm. But I remembered that my mother’s birthday was the next day and thought it would be a great surprise so I did it. I got on the 6:30pm train that night, was in the dentists office at 9am the next morning. They did a full evaluation. It was actually pretty great! Professors looking at my teeth, deciding what to do, making sure everything was up to snuff. They even made a cool model of my teeth! Perf. Still $1500, but not nearly as bad as $2800. But then I started thinking about the cost of getting up there and back. I take trains because I’m tall and busses are real painful. Train rides are expense. And the fact that root canals are usually three visits meant that the price kept going up. Was it worth three four hour rides back and forth? Did I have enough Amtrak points for that?
When I got back to New York, I decided to call my insurance company to see if I missed anything. I had just changed insurances, so maybe their plan would be better (Doubtful). I had United Health Care Community Plan previously and switched to HealthFirst Community Plan with DentaQuest. I called them up and asked how much of a root canal would be covered by their plan. After a minute, they came back and said, “All of it.” My jaw dropped. All of it?? How could one insurance company only cover $1000 and the other cover all $3800? Seemed weird. But it worked for me! I got on Zoc Doc to find a doctor and I was off to the races. Which dentist would I pick!?
Turns out there aren’t many dentists who take the HealthFirst Medicaid dental plan in NYC. The only one I could find was a dentist in Chinatown, quite the commute, but closer that Boston and FREE. I made an appointment and headed down there. After all, how bad could it be?
Me getting to my appointment in Chinatown in the rain.
Have you seen Blade Runner? Because the scene in Chinatown was basically Blade Runner. I arrived in Chinatown, walked up out of the subway station and it was POURING rain. Umbrellas everywhere. I huddled under my umbrella, darting through Chinatown residents until I finally arrived at the office.
I sat down, my knees wet from the rain. Another peril of being tall, the umbrella doesn’t provide good coverage for my knees. This place was like, SO Chinatown. it was me and four old Chinese people. There were Chinese New Year decorations everywhere and on the TV was a Chinese show that I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. Two really enthusiastic hosts watched as people sang on a very elaborately colorful stage and Chinese words would fly at the screen and they would yell at the audience and the Chinese people in the waiting room would squee with delight. Luckily, i had various dating apps on my phone, so I had PLENTY to do. Nothing gets guys in the mood like talking about root canals.
They finally called me into the office and I sat down. One of the assistants took X-Rays and the dentist came in and gave me the most painful cleaning of my whole life. He used a water pic and it killed. Thinking about the reputation of Root Canals for being top-level-pain, if a simple cleaning was this painful, a root canal must be much, much worse.
I still wasn’t completely phased. It’s 2015, Root Canals are supposed to be NBD, right? Then they brought in the X-Rays. They were FILM. FILM. Like, developed in a LAB film. I had never seen this before. My whole life, X-Rays were on this new thing called a COMPUTER. My stomach dropped. If this was their X-Ray technology, how good could their Root Canal technology be?? Then when I left, I saw that the receptionist didn’t even have a computer. It was all in a schedule book. Being the tech-fiend that I am, this made me the most nervous. I left with a bad feeling. I did NOT want to go back.
So I put it off. They called me to tell me the insurance went through, I didn’t respond. They left a voicemail, nothing. I put it off for about a month, until I got sick of all the food getting stuck in that tooth. I seriously would floss and get like half a burrito out of there. I had to travel with floss. No good. I decided to go ahead and make the appointment.
Thanks for reminding me, bathroom key.
I arrived at the dentist and was immediately informed that they were running 45 minutes late. The only thing worse then having to wait for something is having to wait for something you desperately don’t wanna do. The only comfort was that people walking out of the dental area looked like they weren’t in horrible pain. So that was nice. I waited and waited. I took the bathroom key that said “MAN” on it and came back. Then they called me in.
I wasn’t terribly nervous at this point. I just wanted it over with. I put my bag down, stepped into the chair, laid back. The Root Canal specialist came in and said, “You’re the tallest patient I had today, this is a Chinatown dentist after all.” We laughed and I was sold. All I needed was a mildly racist comment. This put me at ease. He described the whole process and I honestly didn’t understand any of it so I just nodded. Then he put this rubber net in my mouth and he continued to ask me questions to which I replied, “Ahhh MMmmm” or “MM yaaaa”. I never understand why dentists ask complicated questions when clearly our mouths are otherwise occupied.
He numbed my gums and then injected the novocaine. In front of the tooth, behind the tooth. It was uncomfortable. Those needles alone are enough to send shivers down your spine. And when he moved on to make three more injections after the first one, I was pretty nervous. They were definitely painful. Then he started drilling and I didn’t feel a thing! I also couldn’t feel my face or my sinuses, but my tooth felt like almost nothing. I began counting the dots on the ceiling. Smelling the tooth dust coming from the drill in the air. And the rubber net blocked any of it from getting into my mouth, so that was pretty good.
Every so often, he would break me out of my ignorance of whatever was happening with my tooth by telling me, “Wow! You have a long root!” And show me on this needle instrument that had apparently been inside there. Seriously, it looked like they amputated the poison-injector off of a giant spider. I would have told him to stop telling me what he was doing, but my mouth was both numb and full. So it didn’t really matter cause I couldn’t feel a damn thing.
And then it was done! To be completely honest, it was better than a filling. I think because of the rubber net thing. None of the tooth pieces got into my mouth, which I suppose is what I really don’t like about a filling. Really, it was 100% painless. And this is the most janky dentist’s office I had ever been in. And I’ve been in quite a few since moving to NYC eight years ago.
It’s been a couple days now and the tooth is almost painless. It was pretty sore yesterday, but fine as long as I didn’t chew on it. And I dutifully took my Advil every four hours to prevent inflammation. Now I just have to get a post and a crown. Whatever that means. Hopefully those will be just as okay as the root canal was.
So I guess the moral here is that Root Canals are FINE. The worst dentist office I’ve ever been to was FINE. I guess I’ll wait to see if there’s a complication or something, but overall, the procedure was great. I guess the one weird thing was my eye got kind of black and blue after. But it seems like it’s going away. I guess check back in a few weeks to see if my next post is a Eulogy.
So don’t fear the dentist! Don’t fear a root canal! Don’t fear physical X-Rays! It’s gonna be FINE.
Unless I die.