The dentist next door is very good, but he costs so damn much. I had to pay nearly $2,000 for a cap. That's nuts. So I dropped him. Then I joined a dental discount plan called Careington. Here are my experiences with Careington so far.

My daughter was having wisdom tooth discomfort. I called up a Careington dentist. Couldn't always get right through to them, often end up with their machine, leave a message. They did call back and we made an appointment.

She went there, got a lot of x rays, for a lot less money than the next door guy would have done. A bunch of x rays, an exam, and a cleaning, for about $120. But a few weeks later I got a bill for another $35. I called up and challenged it, and haven't heard from them since. Was it an honest mistake on their part or do they just give it a try, to get more money out of people who have already paid the bill? I don't know.

This morning I went to my first Careington dentist, for a cleaning. It was an Indian woman. She didn't have an assistant, and did the cleaning herself. I couldn't understand some of the things she was saying. She seemed very nice though. I got to her office before she did, and had to wait outside of the door until she got there for my 9 a.m. appointment.

She also looked at my teeth and told me about some work I need. She asked me to get my old x rays. I did that. When I picked up my x rays, the receptionist at the expensive dentist said "good luck".

After the cleaning, I had a little problem. Part of my gum was swollen, and there was a little white spot on it. It didn't exactly hurt, but it felt stiff. It's not something I wanted. I put peroxide on it. I looked at it a few hours later and the swelling had gone down some, and the white dot was gone. I rinsed with Listerine to kill any remaining germs. I still feel the stiffness.

I think this dentist irritated my gum and caused an infection. But it doesn't seem to be a big deal, and maybe that happens a lot. My expensive dentist had given me a temporary cap, and it immediately came out, and he replaced it, and that came out too. So things don't always go right with dental work.

My worst experience with a dentist was a long time ago, when a different dentist was working on a deep filling and he said "oops". You don't want to hear a dentist or doctor say "oops". He nicked a nerve.

The bottom line is that I can't afford to spend thousands of dollars on dental work, stripping my life savings for this kind of expense. I'm going to keep going to the Indian lady. We'll see how it goes. She charged $30 for a cleaning and $16 for the checkup. That's something I can easily afford. My former dentist would have charged like $125 for the same thing, maybe more, maybe triple what I had to pay.