Dental Schools

Those of us without dental insurance are lucky to be living here! Missouri Southern State University is probably 6 or 8 miles from us and they have a dental hygiene school. We can go there and get our teeth cleaned and full x-rays for $35. It’s an all day job because it’s a teaching “lab”. There’s an instructor for every so many hygienist students so everything they do, someone comes by and checks them, checks your mouth to see what they’ve done. The girls I’ve had have been really friendly and seemed to do a good job. I think you an choose to go from 8 – 3 (or something like that) with an hour off for lunch or you can got two half days – just depends on what’s available.

We’ll soon have something similar with dentists. Kansas City University College of Dental Medicine has just opened a brand new facility here. They will start taking patients this summer. For now, they’re having potential patients come in and get the screening. They want you to commit to seeing their dental students for four years. I think the plan is to get enough patients for the dental students and as each class graduates, they’ll add a new “class” of patients. Vince and I went in this morning and they have dentists (who are instructors in the school) and hygienists who do x-rays, go over all your dental issues/wants/needs and decide if they will accept you as a patient. I asked why they wouldn’t accept someone and she said “If you have perfect teeth with no issues, you probably wouldn’t be accepted.” They need their dental students to have something to “fix”. Vince and I were both accepted so we should get called back for more x-rays/exams/treatment plan during the summer.

There are things they can’t do just yet – dental implants, bridges, dentures, etc. They can do crowns, probably not this coming year but the next year. I think they only have first year students here now.

They said the cost is about half what it would be at a regular dentist. Last time I went to a regular dentist here for a cleaning (no x-rays), it was over $200. If Vince and I are doing that twice a year, that’s $800 per year. I’ll probably only get mine cleaned once a year . . mostly because I do not like going to the dentist but I guess to be a participant in the dental school, I’ll go however often they tell me to go.

Vince isn’t so much of a talker. Even when he and I are talking, it’s like pulling teeth (no pun intended) to get full sentence responses from him. When we came out of the dental office, I was telling him where the hygienist I had lives, what her husband does, what kind of dogs she has. Of course, I never stop talking (which may explain why Vince doesn’t talk!) and I said “She even wants to move to Greenfield”, which is where I told Vince a while back I’d like to live. He was looking at me like I had two heads and I said “What’s wrong with Greenfield?” He said “Nothing . . but my hygienist hardly talked to me and you know the life history of the hygienist you had!” I said “Did you talk to her?” No. Well . . why would she talk to you if you didn’t talk to her? 🙂

It’s not fun going to the dentist but knowing I’m spending half as much as I would be spending at a regular dentist makes it all a bit easier.