It was $595 for three teeth today.

She was only going to do two of them, but then she realized that the third one was in a really inconvienient place (last back tooth in the upper right side) so she went ahead and took care of that one, so she wouldnt have to come back later and do it. She said it was the most difficult tooth and had a HUGE high mercury amalgam in it. She said it was in there pretty deep. She was surprised at that.

I wasnt too surprised, I'm realizing the difference between good dentists (the nice one who worked on me today) and bad dentists...the putz I went to for over 20yrs until a couple of years ago when he had a hissy fit and tossed dental tools across the room, cussed me out and stomped off.

My old dentist used to put numbing gel on my gum, and then immediately stab me with the novocaine needle. He'd wait a minute or two and then try to start drilling.

My new dentist put a q-tip of numbing gel on my gum, let it sit there for 2 or 3 minutes, and then she injected me with the anesthetic (not novocaine) and then she had me sit there for 15 minutes to wait for my mouth to numb up, and then came in and started working.

She also had "tv glasses". (little tv monitors on the front of the glasses with headphones built in) I watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while she worked on my teeth.

I had a bit of claustrophobia when she started. I had the tv glasses on, dentist on one side, tech on the other, and a big drill in my mouth. I had a sudden flashback to being in the MRI machine and started to panic. Her tech put her hand on my arm, and I tried to concentrate on Harry and the panic passed. My old dentist wouldnt have even had a tech, and he sure as heck would not have done anything to keep me from freaking. (and he wouldnt have cool stuff like tv glasses and Harry Potter dvd's. I think he's stuck in the 1960s)

What freaks me out is whenever she mentioned my amalgam fillings, she keeps calling them "high mercury content amalgams". Here I am, with an MS diagnosis, and she's telling me that my fillings are teeming with mercury.

I'm so glad I got at least 1/4th of the amalgams out. Now I really want the others out, but I'm doing it slowly so I dont get overwhelmed with mercury if any leaks out into me. I do feel a little weird tonight. I'm constantly mistyping or misspelling words, and I keep going over stuff to make sure that my spelling is ok. I've been misspelling words a lot in the past year, but I usually catch them, I swear tho, my typing skills tonight suck. So, I wouldnt be surprised if I got a little bit of the mercury dumped into my system.

Oh, I should also mention, when I was 3 or 4, my parents took me and my sister to a quack dentist (didnt know he was a thief and a seriously horrible dentist) He's responsible for some of my high mercury content fillings. He was putting fillings in my teeth when I was 3yrs old. We went to him till I was about 7yrs old. He's the jerk who's responsible for my complete terror of dentists. He TIED ME DOWN into the chair whenever he'd put a filling in my mouth. (my parents went in with me, they never knew)

At least my next dentist was just an arrogant jerk, not a quack arrogant jerk.

I love my new dentist, she's a heck of a lot more gentle than my two childhood dentists.