This is a bit of a saga, but I gotta explain how badly my old dentist failed me to really drive…read morehome just how happy I am with the care I received at Advanced Dental Care.
About a week ago, a tooth that had been worked on by another dentist became infected. As anyone who's suffered an infected tooth knows, the pain is unbearable, making work and sleep impossible.
The other dentist was on vacation and his office told me to wait until he returned. I had a course of antibiotics, so this didn't bother me that much.
I waited a week, saw my old dentist. This tooth had been filled two or three times before (the fillings kept breaking), and at this point, I wanted it extracted. I *could* afford the root canal and crown the other dentist suggested, but having already wasted $3-4000 on that tooth with nothing to show for it but unbearable pain, I didn't want to spend *another* $3-4000 for the privilege of more unbearable pain in the future.
My old dentist said he couldn't do the extraction, and that I'd have to get it done at an endodontist or oral surgeon. The old dentist scheduled an appointment for me with an endodontist. I was under the impression that was for an extraction, but it turns out the endodontist I was referred to doesn't do extractions. (I hope I am not the only person who finds it strange that so many dentists seem unable to pull out a tooth!)
So I called my old dentist *again* and his office pointed me at an oral surgeon. I'm running out of antibiotics and I can tell that the infection is starting to come back, so I'm starting to panic. I call the oral surgeon's number, it goes to voicemail even though they're supposed to be open, and the voicemail inbox is full. Turns out that the same company (private equity?) owns almost all the oral surgeons in the area and the use the same answering service, y'know, the one with the full voicemail inbox.
At this point I'm really starting to lose it - I can't deal with missing another few days of work and another few nights' sleep. I start calling every dentist in the area. An astonishing number of them *will not pull a tooth* and maintain I must get it done at an oral surgeon.
I'll admit that Advanced Dental Care was low on my list. Their website is a bit dated, which gave me a bit of pause. But after going through all the other options. I gave them a call.
They managed to get me an emergency appointment ASAP. I already felt pretty good when I walked through the door. My old dentist's office was run down and dirty, but Advanced Dental Care was spotless.
I spent a minute or two explaining the situation to Dr. Rami. Unlike *every* other dentist I'd been able to get ahold of, he thought it was perfectly reasonable to not want to spend thousands of dollars on a treatment that may well fail.
It turns out that my old dentist was either incompetent, scamming me, or lying. A dentist plainly could remove my tooth, because Dr. Rami did it in about 10 minutes with no issues. Whereas my old dentist seemed to have trouble using novocaine, Dr. Rami got me so numb that I didn't even realize he had finished extracting the tooth until he showed it to me.
The total I paid was something like $400. Dr. Rami didn't try to talk me into a root canal I didn't want (and which I believe was unlikely to succeed long term). I walked out of the office with one less tooth, but about $3600 more in my pocket than I would have had if I listened to my old dentist.
It probably won't be a surprise to hear that I fired my old dentist, and from now on, I'm getting all my work done here. Other dentists might have fancier websites or office buildings, but if you want a dentist who isn't going to try to squeeze you for every dollar or try to foist treatments on you that you don't want, I suggest you check this place out. He can even pull a tooth, which is (bizarrely) more than I can say for most dentists these days.
