Dental Adventures, or how a little grey spot cost $20k

This has nothing to do with video games or the tech industry , but rather falls under the category of stuff I had trouble learning about and maybe my post can help someone else.

I'm about 95% of the way through a crazy bunch of dental work that started about three and a half years ago, have a little time on my hands, and figured I'd post about it. Those with a weak stomach for stories of dentistry or financial pain may not want to read on.

Five years ago or so, I noticed a small discoloration on my front tooth. Like a slight grey color beneath the surface, in one corner near the gum. It'd been there a while I'd asked dentists about it, but they'd always kind of said "hmm... not a cavity. Not sure. Just leave it."

Early in 2006 I got fed up and decided I wanted it taken care of and went to see a high end dentist (Spektor dental in Bellevue, WA, who are awesome). Dr Spektor consulted with her husband, who's a high end specialist, and they decided it was most likely root resorption. The wikipedia entry spells it out in detail, but the short version is that it's a condition where something (small defect or trauma to the tooth or such) causes your system to attack the tooth, killing it from the inside out. Unlike decay, it takes a long time to do its thing, but eventually the tooth has to come out.

So the doctor tells me that (a) it's not only in the one tooth I've noticed, but in a neighboring one as well, (b) the solution is to pull them out and put in implants, and (c) that because one of the teeth is out of line from the others, they want to put braces on me for a couple years first.

"Let me get this straight", says I, "you want to put braces on my teeth for two years, then yank them out? I'm getting a second opionion!" Turns out she was right.

To make matters worse, they break the news to me that I have a bunch of other work that needs doing (20 year old amalgum fillings that are starting to go, a crown that needs doing, a crown that needs replacing, etc), and that it'd be a good idea to do it all before I get the braces.

OK, off we go.

• March 06 through Aug 06 - Two crowns, various consults with specialists, numerous fillings replaced. Total out of pocket spend about $2500.
• August 06 - Braces on. After insurace this cost about $2500 out of pocket

Now it was a matter of waiting for the braces to do their thing, going in once in a while to get the wires replaced, etc. A major pain in the butt to floss (Waterpik's electric flosser is awesome btw), but not that bad. On the plus side, getting braces made me lose 10 pounds.

In early 08 I relocated to Oregon, so I had to find new dentist (Kaiser - meh), new orthodontist (Kaiser - Dr Ratliff - very good, but Kaiser is *ok*), new prosthedontist (Dr Halmos - awesome), new dental surgeon (Dr Henshaw - also awesome).

• Second half 08 I go see all the new guys and get various Xrays, consults, etc. Total spend about $500

With teeth almost straight, we start to coordinate all my stuff. Dental surgeon worries that my frenulum (little piece of skin attaching top lip to gum at center) is going to tug at the gum after the implant surgery, potentially pulling the gum up assymetrically. Solution: Snip it!

• March 09 - frenectomy, a 'minor surgery' that is fast, but smarts like hell for days afterward. Total out of pocket, $500 (IIRC)

Next up is the big surgery, the extractions! I was NOT looking forward to this. Again, further complications, it turns out that I have thin gums, so he's going to do a skin graft as part of it.

• March 09 - surgical stint made by prosthedontist to guide the surgeon, and temp teeth to cover implants while they heal (I forget the cost of this. $500?)

The day of the surgery was not fun. Go to prosthedontist, get stint and fake teeth. Go to Ortho, 30 min appointment to get wires removed. Go to dental surgeon, >4hrs in the chair getting skin graft from roof of mouth to gums, two teeth pulled, two 12mm titanium posts implanted in my skull, etc Maybe 25 injections in all. I lost count.

After that, mouth all bloody and numb, back to ortho for another 2 hrs, where he gave me more novocain and vasoconstrictor and then put braces back on, with fake teeth covering gaps attached to the wires.

• April 09 - Surgery, gum tissue grafts, etc. Total out of pocket, about $8700.

Now it was a matter of that healing up and the bone growing in around the implants until they were solit enough to load.

• June 09 - bottom braces off (no cost)
• July 09 - top braces off, temporary crowns on implants ($800)

I'm more or less done now. It's a matter at this point of making sure the gums settle at the right height, and then getting the permanent, porcelain crowns put on (sometime in august or september), which will cost another $3000

So, in the end it's going to cost me a total of about $19k to have my little gray spot fixed. It needed to be done though, as it would have turned into far more. I'd never heard of root resorption but have since run into a number of friends that have had it and have had more or less the same process to go through. Maybe this post will help someone else running into the same thing.

I'm old!

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. Busy week at work and I haven't had time.

In other news, I turned 40 yesterday. Ugh. I'm old.

My darling wife arranged for us to go hot air ballooning (have wanted to go for some time) but Oregon weather predictability being what it is, we couldn't go and had to take a raincheck. Oh well.

She also got me a Wii, so I'll be catching up on a bunch of games on the to-play list (Boom Blox, Galaxies, World of Goo, etc) over the coming weeks.

Back on the horse...

Man... over 2 weeks without posting. Very unlike me. (VGVC is lagging even more. Really ought to do something about that...)

Things have been busy between work & settling into the new house. Work's also involved some travel. Did a few days in San Fran for work-related meetings, dinner with Chris, lunch with... well, no one talks about Fight Club.

Montreal last week for 3 days which was fun, but tightly packed. Work related meetings and dinners, tons of work to do in small gaps of time between, and then one afternoon of visits with mom, dad, friends. Flew back 6:00am Saturday to attend Adam & Stacey's wedding party.

Hopefully should catch up now that I am stationary (I think?) until GDC Paris.

Robots suck!

They don't of course. They are the coolest thing in the world, especially to my four year old son, who thinks that robots, Lego, and Star Wars are all the coolest things in his world.

So Lego Star Wars, which has Lego R3D2 and C3PO robots in it, is a perfect storm of coolness.

My wife got him a Star Wars toy the other day and didn't realize she was buying a Star Wars *Tansformer* toy... which meant it *turns into* a robot. Coolness intensifies.

Tom was pointing out all the parts of the robot to me, saying "these are his guns, these are his wings, and this is the part that sucks up the dirt".

Of course, these are the types of things one might infer if you grow up around robots.

Settling in...

Lots of unpacking this weekend. At least a hundred boxes worth, with many still to go.

Did a big Ikea run. New desk (assembly not yet started) for the office, and new bunk bed for Son #1 (many hours of frustrating assembly).

Did big Fry's run. New TV (46" Sony LCD), two LCD wall mounts, HD antenna (yay for over-the-air digital), cables, etc. Mounted the LCD but left running cables through walls for another day.

We've Moved

We did our move this week. Exhausted, and still half living out of boxes, but we are in the new place:

Pantsless in Seattle

Finished our taxes last night.

Two surprises:

• A healthy refund. (Between all change of employers, a bunch of financial stuff I did, new baby, etc, I wasn't sure where we'd end up).
• When itemizing all the charitable donations, specifically all the non-cash ones, it turns out that I donated, among other things, no less than THIRTY SEVEN pairs of men's pants! This from going from 36" waist, to 34", to 32" to today's 30". Had to buy new pants several times only to discard a few months later.

It's nice to lose weight, but it's not necesarily cheap either!

Letting Toddlers Play With Knives

This great talk from Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, is a good watch for anyone raising kids in today's overprotective society.

It really resonated with me. (Spoiler warning: Watch the video before reading the rest of this post. If the link below is broken, watch here)






Of the 6 things he encourages us to let our kids do, my parents -my father in particular - encouraged *all* of them.

1. Play with Fire: I was allowed and even encouraged to do so, including building my own rockets. He didn't even intervene in my making my own gunpowder until one of my rockets actually worked and almost knocked my neighbor off his roof when an ill-timed flight coincided with his choice of days to re-shingle.
2. Own a pocket knife: My dad gave me both a folding pocket knife as well as a sheathed deer-bone handle boyscout knife that had been his when he was a kid. As Gever says, it was a universal tool. We whittled, carved, disected bugs, skinned squirrels (sorry peta people), peeled bark, made conkers, and a thousand other things with them.
3. Throw a spear: I did. When we lived in South Africa i got one. Dad also bought me a bow (not a little plastic one - a fiberglass one that could put an arrow a good inch into a maple), a slingshot, and a pellet gun.
4. Deconstruct appliances: I was always allowed to take apart any device that was going in the trash or was otherwise non-functional. I was given full access to dad's shop including all power tools from as early as I can remember. I beleive at around 9 or 10 I recall being told to "be extra careful" with the electric jigsaw.
5. Break the DMCA: We didn't have it. But dad DID encourage questioning authority and WHY systems were structured the way they were (including the law).
6. Drive a car: I got to sit on dad's lap and drive the car. I also was allowed to build or acquire a fair number of two or four-wheeled contraptions that had internal combustion engines, even though I was too young to legally drive them.

Anyhow. My wife and I have had numerous conversations about 'risky' activities, that usually go along the lines of "what age is it ok for him/her to be doing this/that?", and I often feel that we as a society are far too protective of our kids, and that this may be doing it's own kind of harm. This talk really helped crystalize that sentiment for me.

(Update: Fixed link in post)

Back from Vacation

I'm back after 8 days in sunny hawaii (only 5 of which were sunny :-( ). We rented a little house on the windward coast of Oahu and had a lovely time. Now, back on the grid and back to work!

Our House in Bellevue is For Sale

Our house got listed. Or see it on Zillow here.

If you know anyone looking for a lovely home in the area, point them this way.

We really do love the house and wish we weren't leaving it, but alas, 'tis not a mobile home and we are relocating.

Good geek home too. X10 lighting, media room, wired speakers all over the ouse. Includes many hundreds of feet of hardwired gigabit ethernet cable, fished with care by yours truly!

Bye bye Gran

Just found out that my grandma passed away at the ripe old age of 95. She'd been fading in health for a while now, so it was not unexpected. I hadn't seen her in a few years since she lived in the UK.

Sharp as a whip to the end, I'll remember her as seen below. Smile on her face and never saying no to a bit of dessert and a glass of red!


Bye Grandma, we love you!

We now return you to regularly scheduled programming

Bonjour Blogosphere,

Apologies for going dark for a while, but I had a bunch of things line up on top of each other that kept me fairly busy.

As stated in the previous post, my son Matthew was born just over a week ago. He's a delightful little fellow who's actually pretty low maintenance; at least when compared to our experience with preemie twins. Alisa's doing most of the work (alas, I am without the means to feed him), but I've been shuttling the twins to school, swimming lessons, etc. Had a nice outing yesterday taking my daughter to Fry's for the first time. "Daddy, I LIKE that big tv!". *sniff* *that's my girl*

However, I've not been exactly idle from work at the same time. I had a bunch of Vista-enhanced casual games being released in time for the Vista launch; a bunch of work in getting some Vista-related developer documentation together, and was helping with a bunch of the aspects of getting our crew ready for the Casual Connect conference (F.K.A 'Casuality') in Amsterdam this coming week, even though I don't get to go this year >:-(

On top of that, I upgraded my home dev machine to Vista RTM, and have the SW set up to join the XNA Creators Club, should I ever get around to dusting off my coding chops.