Wednesday, September 24, 2014

just skip the anesthesia. he's tough.

My oldest son had his wisdom teeth out today. While I worried and waited, I got to thinking about managing his pain and remembering the aftermath of my brain surgery two years ago. I made a bunch of notes for a blog post about this and then thought to do a search of this blog. It turns out I wrote a post on exactly this subject almost a year ago. 

Sigh.

Can I blame these lapses in memory on the brain surgery or just on aging? Or stress?

My son's procedure went well and he is now very stoned and asleep in his room. To pay for all this we had to put 1800.00 on our credit card.

This is mind-boggling to me. Why is this not covered by public health care?I know the historical reason why (the first wave of Medicare was supposed to be followed by dental care and a Pharmacare program. That never happened.) but doesn't it cost the province much more to hospitalize someone whose wisdom teeth have become impacted?

Dental care is a real "don't get me started." Ask anyone who knows me.

Fortunately, my private insurance will cover most of the cost. However, it only covers part of the cost of anesthesia. What would have happened if we had been unwilling to pay the difference? Our 16 year old son would only have been partially anesthetized while they yanked out his wisdom teeth? 

This mystifies me.

And it's only a small taste of what we'd experience if we didn't have socialized medicine.


Gratuitous photo of my handsome son, with all wisdom teeth still in his mouth

6 comments:

Catherine said...

Yeah. I just had my second tooth taken out. I'm getting them done one at a time simply because it's far too expensive - and forget going under! I had some numbing, and then in they went.

So, yes, why on earth do we not cover this stuff? With no insurance, it burns the pocket - and I had to think carefully about the decision to pull or not to pull. Ridiculous.

laurie said...

It's just wrong! When I didn't have insurance, I had a tooth pulled with almost no anesthetic, to save money. It's practically medieval. Seriously. This is a real "don't get me started."

Lene Andersen said...

Ridiculous. Much sympathy and icecream thoughts to your handsome son.

(PS I love how many of the photos of your family members are of them reading a book)

Ron said...

It is sad how money and wealth rules the present day world.And diseases that haunt us and hurt us. My heart goes out to you

Felix said...

We forget that insurance company's are businesses. Them profiting and keeping their money is at their best interest.

Sasha said...

I'm often grateful for the medical care that we do have here in Canada, but you're right, there's still a long way to go. And when spending money could actually save the system money... yeah. Let's wait until we heap human suffering on top of the extra money we then have to spend addressing something that's gotten out of hand for lack of preventative medicine. Grr.