crowned

After the root canal, comes the crown.

Because I have a cracked tooth, now minus sensation, it needs a crown to hold it together (forever, hopefully). The one next door to it has a crack too, discovered by the endodontist earlier this year. My dentist was going to do the crown for the root canalled tooth and a filling for the 'new' crack, but when I went for the first of my series of crown appointments two weeks ago, she said she thought it would be very difficult to fill that other crack and I should have it crowned too - a double crowning. (Unless I wanted to go straight to root canal for it? No, I didn't.)

People warned me that having a root canal was bad news but it wasn't too bad in the end. Where are the warnings about having a crown done? This is much worse. I spent an hour and 45 minutes in the dental chair today. It was horrible. One of the worst aspects is having what looks like a mouthguard full of setting gel jammed over all your teeth for some time (like 10 minutes) to get an impression for the crown to be made (it's made somewhere else, in a lab, by a technician.) After the first 10 minutes, my dentist found that it had missed some bit of my teeth so she had to do it again.

Yoga breathing is coming in handy.

Comments

[Jacinta]

ouch

[Valerie]

Much sympathy! I got my first crown on Wednesday this week. I don't think it was as bad as yours, but it was no fun. This business of getting old is for the birds. :-(

Did you have to pay for your crown, or was it covered by government healthcare, or some other type of insurance? Mine cost US$1200, none of which was covered by any kind of insurance. :-(

[suze]

If I had private insurance, some of the cost would be covered by that. But I don't so I've had to pay the full amount, which is about the same as yours. However, you can claim a tax rebate on anything over $2000ish spent on healthcare each year (I can't remember the exact figure), so I will get some money back in my tax.