Under warranty

I had to go back to the dentist this afternoon as I was still having toothache.

The intense pain when drinking anything hot or cold had gone but it was extremely painful when touched.

When I rang the dentist this morning I had the choice of either seeing Kim, my usual dentist, tomorrow at 1.30pm or being seen this afternoon by another dentist. As much as I like Kim I couldn’t wait until tomorrow so settled for the latter.

Seems simple enough – err not quite. We are talking about the NHS and their new dental charges…The receptionist explained that there were two queries.

Query 1: They would have to charge me £15.50 because I’m not been seen by my usual dentist. If I was prepared to suffer in agony another day there would be no charge.

Query 2: Even though my toothache came on while I was in the middle of on-going treatment, because they had signed me off on Tuesday I would have to pay another £42.40. It didn’t matter that Kim said to come back if I had any more problems with my tooth.

These were my options. Suffer until my next 6 monthly check-up. Pull out the offending tooth myself or pay up. I decided to go for option three.

So back to the tooth. Having told the dentist (who was really nice) my symptoms, it turns out that I have an infection in the nerve.

The only treatment is to remove the nerve completely, leave the 'wound' open then fill it up later. As the infection is quite bad I've got to take antibiotics for seven days. Thankfully I can still drink ! ! !

While I was thanking her for seeing me at such short notice she said she was going to waver the £15.50 and put the work done today and the two necessary follow up appointments as on-going work from Tuesday – thus saving me another £42.40.

Guess when I have to go back – 25th July at 11.00am which was when my appointment was to have been originally…

Marie