My old private dentist rang

Yesterday my old private dentist that I'd been seeing for a few years (before the gov canned the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme) rang right out of the blue. Well his receptionist did. He was a good dentist but the only way I kept seeing him was through the CDDS with him bulk billing all the procedures. He was way too expensive to see privately, not that I could afford average pricing anyway on Centrelink.

An example was when I first saw him, before I even knew I was eligible for the CDDS, on a long weekend. I was having massive pain over one side of my head and the tooth was excruciating. I'm sure people here can relate to not going to a dentist because of the expense. Hence I just delayed and delayed and in the end had not choice but to ring someone when it'd gotten to an unbearable level, just my luck that being in the middle of a long weekend. Turned out he had to start a root canal and I was in the chair for some time. In the end for that single consultation, on a Sunday with the Monday being a holiday, with getting his nurse in as well, plus travel and all, was fuckin $1,300! All up that route canal cost nearly $3,000! It became part of the debt that I was never able to pay off. 

Much later when I had to get another root canal done, it was all bulk billed through the CDDS, and I asked the then secretary exactly how much is the schedule fee for a root canal? I had an idea it may have been considerably less than this dentist was charging his private patients, and it was. The schedule fee for a complete root canal from start to finish was about $800 she told me.

So anyway I told the receptionist that rang that I was going through the dental hospital now. She sounded rather disappointed. As fate would have it, my appt is this morning.