Dental Woes

Yesterday evening me and my dog were on the couch sharing a few bedtime snacks and I had eaten maybe 6-8 Doritos when suddenly I felt something hard in the crunching. I stopped, pulled it out and low and behold it was a tooth!! I never thought about it being my own. I looked in the mirror and saw the very front lower tooth was gone all the way down to the gum line...wonderful. Now I'm looking like a real red neck who needs a pickup truck and a few hogs in the back. I'm going to have a good dental bill.
So, I go to the dentist today thinking he could just drill down the center of what was left, put a post on it and then crown it. It didn't happen that way. He does a couple x-rays and determines that tooth is totally rotten(what was left of it) and abscessed...has to come out but he can't do just that because the one next to it is nearly in the same condition and only a matter of time before it goes. the one on the opposite side of that one needs some filling and possible a crown as well. They always find more than you bargained for.
I have a few options. Leave it as is and get a temporary bridge(three teeth for $550 but, the bad tooth that broke off is still abscessed. Another option and most expensive is to have a 3 unit bridge with one extraction, another possible root canal and another post and core with composite bond plus the price of extraction on the bad tooth. That will all cost a whopping $3500. I could get a real good upper and lower for that price.
The last option is what they call an "Appearance Partial" for $500. I don't' know the difference between that and a temporary bridge. This all totally sucks. Hell, maybe I'll just leave it as is and fit right in with some of the good ol' boys here.
Now the bad news. He wants to put me on antibiotics three days prior to the extraction if I go that route. The problem with that is that I take Warfarin and antibiotics has an effect on Warfarin by decreasing it's potency. In short, I'd have to take more of it as not to have a clotting problem but then again, they'd have to take me off Warfarin and/or the Plavix, another blood thinner I take as not to bleed to death when they do the dental work. If I go off the blood thinners I could get blood clots in my legs...that happened three years ago when I was taken off Plavix for an upcoming hernia operation. What's a guy to do. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I was offered a payment plan but it's monthly payments which I don't really want. I can cover it but it just pains me to have to do so. I can think of many things better to do with $3500. Plus I have the hassle dealing with the vascular doctor and the coumadin clinic and chancing the possibility of clots if I got off those drugs for 3-5 days. I saw back in 2009 what that can do and I ended up in the emergency room with a stricture in my calf and two blood clots in the graft they put in my upper thigh about four years earlier. It's a catch 22 situation for sure.
I will say this, Top. Twelve years ago this guy did two crowns for me and one had a post installed as the tooth was too short. They're still there today and haven't caused a minutes trouble. Back then that work was about $1500. I don't know what it would be today.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'll have to chew on it a little and talk with the vascular doc tomorrow and let them know what the worse case scenario could be here and that's the extraction part. It's going to bleed for sure-I just don't know how much and for how long if I don't go off the thinners. I don't' think the dentist will do the work, however, if I don't, knowing how easily you can bleed, not to mention three blood thinners; that is, aspirin, Plavix and Warfarin.

Well, problems come and they go. I've been through worse but thanks. I'll figure something out of this mess. My little sister is undergoing chemo for colon and liver cancer. My problems pale in light of hers.

I remember as a teenage I had an access and didn't know it at the time. It manifest itself as a small bump, if you will, right above my two front teeth at gum line. I just ran my tongue across it one night and it filled my mouth with some nasty stuff. I had to have work done on bothy front teeth. Good teeth doesn't excel in my genes. It didn't matter how many times I brushed and flossing wasn't a word when I was a teenager. I had never heard of it.
I'm on Medicare and have a good supplement but none of that covers anything dental. That is all separate. I never considered dental insurance as my uppers were replaced years ago with a denture and I've lost bottom teeth in the back on both sides...I don't want to lose anymore as I have heard a lower denture is a real pita. Had this happened some years back when I had BCBS they would have covered most of this cost but, once you hit those golden years you don't have a choice, you have to go on Medicare.
More and more I'm considering just doing the temporary bridge thing or the "appearance partial" they told me about. It's awfully chancy coming off the blood thinners and I don't know if I want to take that gamble. It could have cost me my left leg in 2009 when I was only taking aspirin and Plavix at that point and stopped it for those five days prior to a scheduled hernia surgery. Ending up in the emergency room with your foot turning grey because of blood clots is not something I want to go through again. I was in the hospital five days with that ordeal. It was because of that incident that I was put on yet another blood thinner and that's when I started taking Warfarin. The doc told me if this happened again I could loose the foot and or the leg. Teeth just ain't worth that. It's not so much the expense I was told about today but my fear of stopping the blood thinners.
I don't believe there's any dental schools around here that I know of.