If Your Phone Conversation With Your Dentist Office Was Honest!

That is it. That is the question, the phrase, the most dreaded statement that the dentist office can make right now.

Phew. At least that is over. Truly, I do not think it will be necessary for me to go back. My mouth is TOTALLY healthy. Dentist appointments are more annoying than necessary. 

*Flash forward 6 months or 3 years later waking up from excruciating, life-ending, earth shattering pain*

You rush yourself, barreling through to door of your beloved dentist office that has faithfully been calling you *for an embarrassingly long time*. Explaining in GREAT DETAIL, holding your swollen and aching face, to the knowing receptionist how this is THE WORST pain you have ever experienced in your life, and you just do not understand why because it came out of absolutely nowhere! 

They get you in for an emergency visit. You have tears running down your face, struggling to open your mouth wide enough for that stupid, plastic wrapped, x-ray device of death to fit into your mouth so they can see what is going on...

It is done. The dentist walks in. Tells you that he can make all the pain go away. Your tears turn to tears of joy as he walks away and you feel relief sweep over you for the first time since you woke up from a dead sleep at 2am. 

But then some other person comes in, the relief flees from you and you are now staring down at the cost to fix the pain. Thousands. You do not understand. You have insurance. Where is the copay? Where is the coverage? How is it this much? And you are stuck, tears flowing again, in pain, sitting there asking yourself why, how, what could you have done. 

Trust me. Nobody wants to be at THAT place, and nobody thinks this will be them. But the truth of the matter is, this can be any of us. Why? Because we do not think honestly in our hearts that the little 60-minute appointments matter in the long run. What are their benefits? What do they really do? 

They protect us, they help prevent the inevitable decline in our mouth, they guarantee a greater quality of life. Those little appointments are the investment you should make in yourself. Why? You are worth it. 

There is a study in 2013 that involved 21,000 people over the age of 65 they found that people who practiced all three types of dental care in the survey (tooth brushing, regular dental visits, wearing a denture) had a 46% lower mortality risk than those who practiced none of the three!

WOW! Maybe it is time for you to finally call that dentist office back that has been calling you, trying to get you in, caring about the quality of your life and give them another shot. One step at a time- for yourself. 

You get into that appointment, and they find a teeny tiny little cavity that they get treated immediately for an affordable cost.  Without routine visits, this could have gone unnoticed for months or even years till eventually one night the decay that has been slowly eating away at your tooth has reached your nerves and has woken you up from pain. Sitting in a chair having to decide if you can save the tooth which could cost over a thousand dollars or lose it.. Both feel like terrible options. 

Sometimes the investment in ourselves seems inconvenient, unnecessary, or even downright wasteful of our time, energy, or even finances. But when it comes to this one thing, our dental health, and it is our health on the line, the smaller choices are always better than waiting for the bigger ones to sneak up on us.

So as much as you might want to be honest with your dentist and cancel that appointment because life is too busy, do yourself a favor and take care of yourself, invest in yourself. You will be thankful in the long run.