Oh man, this morning I went to my 7am dental appointment. The doctor drilled and drilled and was driven to exclaim as to how big this cavity was. I must have looked mortified, because he was quick to reassure me that they had seen *much* worse. I don't know about that, though, because he kept on muttering "more decay, more decay" as he was drilling into my pathetic molar. Then, he took a photo to show me the damage. Basically, it looked like a dug out volcano. The sliver of tooth left between the gaping hole and my cheek is literally a millimeter, so if he did put a filling in, it would fall out and the tooth would be vulnerable to cracking. It looks like I'm getting a porcelain crown, so I got fitted for it today, and they stuck a purple gum like thing up in there in the meantime to deter any stray SBD food particles from getting stuck. The visit was not painful, except in the monetary sense. My dental insurance only covers 60% of the stuff that isn't standard cleaning/checkup. My boss told me that porcelain crowns run about $800 and I nearly stroked out. This whole dental extravanganza will probably set me back about $1K, when everything is said and done (the crown isn't even the end of it, I have to go back in March to fix a filling that's falling out).

I'm trying to not feel bad about this by reasoning that this is the amount that I normally would have spent to fix my crap Hoopty every year, when I had it, so this time it's for my oral health, and I can't skimp on my oral health. But, I will never, ever skip out on dental visits as long as I have dental insurance. What a massive pain in the tuckus.