Transcript
If you need to get cheap dental work done, I've got some advice and warnings for you. So I just got back from the dentist, and I think it was the second scariest experience of my life. And I'm not someone who has any sort of normal dental anxiety. So right now, I don't have dental insurance, and I needed to get some work done because I had a really, really bad toothache. And in the past, I've done something, which I think is a great idea for a lot of you, which is I went to the NYU School of Dentistry. And the way that works is they've got this big floor where they have a whole bunch of, of dental students, pretty far along in their careers, where you come in and you can get treated by them for, like, $75 for a full cleaning, treatment, x-rays, analysis, everything, which is pretty great. So a year and a half ago, I went in and got some x-rays, I was having some tooth pain, and the student didn't really know what was going on, couldn't figure it out, but on the floor, they had multiple different specialists of, like, all the subcategories, and they were able to call them over, and the endodontist looked at my x-rays, and the oral surgeon looked at my x-rays, and They were able to go and get this like three-part consult done all in one day for the price of like $75, which was great. So that's the what to do and how to use it. But so recently I've been experiencing a really bad toothache, which is not good, and I need to get it treated ASAP. So I went back. They've got a urgent care clinic where you can show up and get treated the same day. And I went in, they took the x-rays, I was seen, and they didn't know exactly what was going. The X-ray didn't show any problem. There was a small line on my tooth that might have meant there was a crack, and the specialist decided that they needed to open up the tooth, drill in, and see if there was a crack and how far it went and what they needed to do. Which sounded pretty okay, I guess. I was hoping there was some type of imaging that they could use to identify the crack instead of drilling in, but it seemed reasonable and I was in enough pain that I said yes. So then the student is the one who started using the drill. well, where things got a bit scarier. Because they put my mouth open and started going to town, and that drill was jostling around a lot more than it should have been. Like it kept knocking against things, and the thing they put in to keep my mouth open, like to clamp it, just kept falling off and didn't bode well. To make matters worse, I started off by saying I'm usually pretty resistant to any of the painkillers, so I asked to have a little bit more. What she was fine with, she gave me some extra, she started drilling, I still felt the pain, she gave me more, She started drilling. I still felt the pain. She gave me more. And then it was pretty okay. So she managed to drill down until the point of actually accessing the dentin. And then she started touching it and who boy shooting pain. At which point she thankfully called over the specialist, the endodontist. And he came in and was like, oh, you're still experiencing pain. And then he goes to show her, hey, if you want to numb the root, you got to inject the pain killer here instead of here, which would have been good to know. at the start on her part. Thankfully, at that point, he took over, and let me tell you, it was a night and day difference feeling his operation of the drill and the equipment and everything versus the student's operation of it. When she was going, just the sheer terror that I felt while this drill was knocking around in my mouth, but the pain's still there. Oh, not great. Anyway, they ended up going and clearing out some stuff, temporary filling. I need to get more work done. I'm figuring that out and we'll hopefully have a cool video about it for you guys because I want to cover some cutting edge dental treatments that they don't offer in that sort of place. But for now, if you need to get a set of x-rays done, cleaning's done, initial consultations, I think that dental schools are a really good place to go get very cost-effective treatment. But once they start operating the machinery, I for one would prefer someone who when taking a drill to my mouth. So I'm finding somewhere else.
Additional notes
If you don't live in NY, there are tons of other dental schools that have similar programs. Just search for one in your area. At the end of my treatment, I was told that I have to come back for a root canal and crown, but that it would take five visits to do so, albeit for a price that was less than most other places in NY. I've taken this opportunity to research a whole bunch of interesting new technologies that are being used to perform root canals. Hopefully, I'll be able to find somewhere that I can make use of them and film parts of it to show you guys. Note: I have nothing against the dental student; she was very nice. It's just that very accurately using a drill on a human is something that takes practice. Which is exactly what she was doing. #dentistry
References
- NYU School of Dentistry treatment/urgent care experience discussed in transcript; source link not listed in workbook.
- Cutting-edge dental/root-canal technologies mentioned in caption; study titles, DOI/PMID numbers, and source links not listed in workbook.