Monday, June 17, 2019

Flap Surgery

After at least 5 years of pressure to see a periodontist, I finally did and got the bad news I was expecting.  Yes, your gums are in bad shape and your teeth are loose.  Without surgery and aggressive care, it will get worse.

To that end, I did the first of four quadrants of flap surgery, where an incision is made in the gums, the area is cleaned and packed with cadaver bone and sewn up.

I started with the worst area, which happened to be the upper right and not only was the flap surgery required, but two teeth  (2 and 3) were extracted as well.  The image below is the next day when I was back at work and the swelling had gone down significantly.  The stitches will stay in for 2 weeks and I am only supposed to eat soft foods on the left side of my mouth


I built it up in my mind to be much more painful than it ended up being.  It sucked, but not as bad as I expected.  

The next procedure will go lower right and I am tentatively considering September.

The third procedure will be upper left and finally lower left.

Finally, I will get implants on the upper right and hopefully not have any other teeth extracted over the next year.

An unfortunate consideration is gaming the dental insurance.

Regular dental only pays $1500/year per individual.  High dental pays $4500/year per individual.

Each flap surgery is about $1200 and insurance covers $700, leaving me on the hook for $500.  The other concern is that medical flex spending is capped at $2700/year so  2 procedures/year sounds about right.  Finally the implant is only covered at 50% so the $1600 implant will be charged $800 to insurance and $800 to me.

Upper Right - 2018-2019 - $500 out of pocket
Lower Right - 2019-2020 - $1000 out of pocket
Upper Left - 2019-2020 - $1300 out of pocket
Lower Left and Implant - 2020-2021 (this year will be Diya's orthodontia as well)

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