Monday, January 12, 2009

Some Vital Information for Today

Just finished with my first dental appointment for the new year. That's the one where my dentist gazes into my piehole to see how many of his car payments can be seen.

I was lucky today. I think he probably only saw one, which he has scheduled for 29 January. And it's just a regular old pedestrian filling, as opposed to the crown he often sells me. Happy days! Somebody else gets to offset most of the cost of his BMW for this quarter.

Actually, these days he prefers to sell the "onlay," which is a sort of crown-in-one-visit deal. When I got one of those, last year, I went into the "other room" and watched his little tabletop computer-controlled ceramic milling machine making the thing. It was pretty cool, truth be told. Any time I'm tempted to some sort of false nostalgia for the "good old days," I think about modern dentistry. It's a reliable cure for foolishness of that sort.

2 comments:

Kevin Knuth said...

"onlay" Sounds VERY cool- what dentist do you use?

Jim Wetzel said...

My dentist is Dr. Daniel P. Hughes, and his office is on Amstutz Road in Leo. If you decide to use him, mention my name -- maybe I'll get a kickback or something. (I doubt it, but hope springs eternal.)

The onlay is a good thing in a lot of ways. You don't have to get an impression made, you don't have to get a temporary installed (and removed -- ouch!), and it's all done in one appointment. However, it isn't always applicable; there still seem to be some situations requiring the conventional crown approach.

Dr. Hughes is, in my opinion, an artist with the needle. I'm a huge coward with respect to needles and medical pain in general. I hardly ever feel a thing when he's doing the job.