I went for a basic cleaning, was basically told my teeth were in bad shape and may decay and fall out if I don’t get work done. Never heard that before but whatever. They recommended a filling and crown first, gave me a bad feeling with some of their reviews and how they pitched it but others said maybe they were right and I should give them the benefit of the doubt. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, after all how bad could they be?

My appointment to get cavities rolled around, and it was rough. The dentist was barking orders at me like it was a military drill. Loses his cool at me when their molding putty wasn’t working correctly and it starts going down the back of my throat. Takes multiple tries to do almost every part of the procedure and finally I’m out of there with a temporary crown.

For the last two weeks, I’ve had a constant need to take ibuprofen and Tylenol due to the amount of pain from the temporary crown. It clearly wasn’t made well, but I had just started a new job and had little time off. I figured I’d just make it to today for the permanent crown to be put on and all would be good.

Wrong. I go in today for what they said would be an easy and painless 30-minute appointment. Turned out the permanent crown was actually not made very well at all, they spent about 90 minutes drilling on it to try and get it to fit my mouth. Part of that time was spent drilling on my upper teeth on the same side to try and get those teeth to fit the crown better… instead of addressing the actual problem, they thought they’d just reshape my other teeth. Finally, everything seemed to be put on correctly and they did an x-ray… turns out the crown was also defective on the bottom and didn’t actually fit the shape of the lower tooth. The lab apparently made it incorrectly. Now, I’m going to have to go in again to get this crown drilled off since they had already cemented it on, then get a crown remade and probably another temporary one, after which I assume I’ll be waiting another two weeks for the next permanent crown. All the while I’m at a new job where their first experience of me will be taking all this time off for the dentist.

The dentist apologists were wrong on this one, it’s been the worst experience I’ve ever had at the dentist bar none. I’m not sure whether to go back or have someone else do the work. I’m worried it won’t get better and they’ll continue to make mistakes, but I don’t know that insurance will cover it if I try a new dentist due to this mess. Two weeks ago, I was optimistic to try a new dentist and now I’m not sure I frankly want to see another dentist again.