Here's the story about one lonely tooth who lost its wisdom and made me a little lighter (mostly in the wallet).

If by some chance a dentist reads this, it's about tooth #27 (or #15 if you use the U.S. nomenclature) and its departed neighboring tooth #28 (or 16). For you laymen (and women) it's the upper left 2nd and 3rd molar. The 3rd molar is the last one, usually called the wisdom tooth because it 'erupts' (I hate that word) between 17 and 21 years of age. The word wisdom, in my case, is used very loosely. I was going to provide you with a picture of my mouth, but to keep it clean, you can go to www.mistupid.com/health/teeth.htm to get an American clickable set of teeth.

This saga started over year ago when my dentist of many years told me that old #27 was starting to look a little tired. Most of it, during the years, had been replaced by amalgam (filling). He said 3 simple words that cost almost as much as the other dreaded 3 simple words. Those words were tooth needs crown. Royalty had now bestowed my family. I should have known by the word crown that this 'procedure' was not meant for mere peasants (and in my case, pésant). If it had been called a retread or a reshingling, certainly they wouldn't be able to command the money I was about to invest in what turns out to be 1/28th of my God-given ivory.

So the saga starts. My dentist referred me to a dental surgeon because I had to get my gums lifted slightly to allow more of the old tooth to show. Also the old #28 (wisdom) was crowding it and therefore should be extracted. Having gone through a wisdom tooth extraction less than a year earlier, the withdrawal of 28 didn't bother me that much. Believe or not, my mouth is not that big and it could use the space.

So last March I finally made the (surgeon) appointment.  The surgery took less than 30 minutes but the extraction seemed to be the major part of this procedure. Had I read this article before getting that wisdom tooth extracted I might have had second thoughts. For about an hour's work, that cost $750 which was mostly covered ($605) by my dental plan. Now my regular dentist wanted to let the whole thing heal for a while before doing any crown work. Of course, I procrastinated and finally went to start the coronation in late August.

He was actually going to try the crown without a root canal but my nails deep into the dentist chair armrests convinced him to first do a root canal. At 48 years old, I had never had one before and I wasn't really missing anything. It was not fun and I have since stopped making jokes to people about little ships going through their new root canals. This procedure ranks up there in price with the surgery ($624 of which $598 was covered).

Finally the crowning touch. This one is easier on the mouth but hits you below the belt. The going rate for a crown is $977 and it's not even made of gold anymore. It's porcelain and steel, the part showing is the porcelain. The biggest problem with this $977 is that the dental plan only covers 50%. So below is the final wrap up.

Visits		Cost	Covered	I paid
First visit (cleaning and recommendation to get a crown)		$126	$126	$0
Surgery and Extraction (3 visits) Pre-op, Op and Post-op		$750	$605	$145
Root Canal and temporary crown (3 visits) plus one to put lost temp back on		$624	$598	$26
Post and Crown (3 more visits) The lab had screwed up my 1st crown		$977	$472	$505
Total number of visits - 11	Totals	$2487	$1801	$686