Life's a Stitch

Los Algodones Dental Work - Do's and Don'ts - Part two

Do:

- go to Algodones for dental work, but make sure you know the name of the dentist that will actually do the work. Check out his/her credentials in advance. My daughter saw a dentist in Cancun, claiming to have attended the University of Michigan and having an affiliation with the ADA. A check online proved both claims to be true and her work was successful.  

- expect pushback from those who think that dental/medical care in another country is an unaccceptible concept. One woman I talked to told me of a friend whose US dentist refused to talk to her again after discovering she had been to Algodones for work. B's work was checked afterwards by an American dentist: the cleaning and four of the crowns were fine. One wasn't acceptible and one required just two seconds of further adjusting. Dental tourism definitely leads to interesting discussions.

Don't worry, those are temporaries, and one has a hole with a story behind it. 

- be aware of the time zones. Los Algodones is on Pacific time, the dentists operate on Arizona time, an hour later, as most of their patients are snowbirds residing in AZ. Here's the complicated part. Most people park on the US side, in a lot owned by the nearby casino located in California, and walk over the border (as rental cars don't come with Mexican insurance),  but is on AZ time. So the lesson learned, is that if you park in the overnight lot, and you are told to move your car by 9:00am, they mean 8:00 am, otherwise you are leaving parking lot at 10:00am and will be expected to pay for another day.  My experience ended with an altercation with a not so understanding sheriff from the reservation. Are you confused? So were we. You've been warned. 

- pay attention to pricing for optometry. I require special lenses a version of which were available, but took 11 days to process, with prices comparable to those in Canada. I elected to shop for frames instead, intending to buy the lenses at home. Upon checking online, the frames were less expensive via mail order.

- eat tacos at Molcas', where "if you don't like the food you don't pay." We were there on multiple occasions and ate beef, goat, pork, fish, shrimp and chicken tacos. Two tacos each, one margarita for the boy and a Diet Coke for me - $12. 

- stay in Yuma or the Hacienda in Algodones. We did both: two nights at the Best Western in Yuma, very reasonable and included breakfast and two beers or glasses of wine at happy hour each night and three at the Hacienda - clean and comfortable and lots of people with whom to commiserate, all sailing in the same dental boat.

- plan on time off from the dentist, difficult when it is impossible to know how long you will be at the clinic. We went to the Yuma Regional Center for a  10:45am movie matinee, at a cushy theater$5/seniors and $6.50 for adults. 

Painting is my stress relief these days. Thank goodness my surgery was on my left hand:

 Don't:

- go to a large clinic that can't tell you who your specific dentist will be. The clinic we attended employed 30 dentists. The clinic's marketing advertised all the right credentials, but your chances of beign assigned to one of the practitioners advertised are not guaranteed.

 - schedule an appointment during the December/January holidays. We ended up driving down and back twice as, although we were told coming on December 22nd would allow sufficient time for work and lab time, it didn't work out that way. Also the dentists working in Algodones, may actually live 10-15 hours away, and understandably want to be with their families during the holidays, leaving a skeleton staff and a packed clinic. 

- expect to be seen on time. Plan to wait for many hours at the clinic for each phase of treatment. That was the number one complaint of most people I talked to. 

- be surprised when they suggest you need a pile of crowns. If your tooth requires a multi surface filling it seems a crown is recommended. We met many seniors who were having every tooth crowned, and a fifteen year old who required fifteen crowns. We were shocked when we were told B needed eight. We agreed to six based on the evidence shown through x-ray and examination. The other two were repaired conventionally by a dentist in California.

- buy controlled prescription drugs (which includes some antibiotics) unless you have a prescription for them. Always buy from one of the major pharmacies. 

 

 

Los Algodones Dental Work - Do's and Don'ts - Part one

Reasonably priced dental care, prescription drugs and optometry services lure uninsured and senior Canadian and US travellers to this "quaint" Mexican border town where there are 300 dental clinics in about six square blocks. There are more dentists here per capita than anywhere else in the world. The town is so geared to dental patients, that the restaurants offer blended meals on request.

I totally get it when you consider how many people are uninsured dentally and are looking at $1300 for a crown in Canada, where in Algodones, the price ranges from $180 (porcelain on metal) to $375 (Cerec, a crown-in-a-day system or Zirconia crowns) each. Last year the Calgary Sun ran this article about dental tourism.

Our 24 year old son, insuranceless, was in need of major work. We did not quite enough research and plunged into a dental adventure. Algodones was a 2.5 hour drive from where we were staying in Palm Springs. I'll give you the ending first and the next post will be the do's and don'ts.

B had a total of six crowns, fewer than they wanted to do, but the x-rays supported the treatment plan for those six specific teeth. His discomfort afterwards required a visit to a dentist in Palm Springs and we were somewhat reassured that four of the six were done acceptably. One, however, will need to be replaced and can best be considered as a temporary requiring extra effort to be kept clean. The other required two seconds of adjusting for a more comfortable fit.

All in all, including the cost of the dentist in Palm Springs, who adjusted his bite to make him finally comfortable, and who did the restorative work on the two teeth that would have been crowned in Mexico, we got what we paid for, $7000 of Canadian dental work for $2000.

I would not recommend the clinic we used, one of the largest in Algodones, but they did their best for us after we requested a change in dentist and they discovered a mistake, including putting us up in their affiliated hotel, the only one in town, for three nights over New Year's. I would be glad to share more specifics, just leave a comment and I'll reply. It bears mention that I met many people in the waiting room over our eight days of dental treatment, who were repeat customers, and were happy with their work.

Our room in the Hacienda:

Making the best of a challenging situation, AKA killing the pain x 2, teeth and hand:

 Completed vacation painting, thought the subject of olives and salsa was appropriate:

 Los Algodones feels like a dental twilight zone. The litter in the street includes occasional discarded dental cotton rolls, floss and and some dropped anti-inflammatories. It feels very safe considering that thousands of people are walking around with cash in their pocket for major dental treatment. I would go again heeding the do's and don'ts in my next post.

 

 

A month of epic proportions

Playing catch up, this will be a long one. Apologies for being incommunicado. Now, having regained the ability to type with both hands, I can provide a recap.

1. Currently six weeks post-op, the hand pain is down to 2.5 out of 10 and the swelling 1 out of 10. The stitches are gone and I'm feeling enough improvement to appreciate the results of my CMC joint replacement. It helped to meet a woman who had both hands done, the first requiring three months off of work, the second was the more typical 4-5 weeks.

2. The holidays, despite being tainted by pain and family fluiness, contained enjoyable high points: Christmas Eve dinner and our annual Frokost in Palm Springs, meeting my daughter's future in-laws, a family picnic around a campfire in Joshua Tree National Park, three half day watercolor workshops with artist Diane Morgan, spending time with grandson Rye guy, and a girls day at the spa thanks to Travelzoo. 

3. Survived my son's dental tourism trip to Los Algodones, Mexico, not without its complications. Bottom line is I'd do it again, but not at a large clinic. My daughter had a good experience at a one woman dental office in Mexico, one where credentials could be checked in advance. The trip was blogable and will occupy future print space on Lifesastitch.

4. I did something I really didn't know how to do. It terrified me for days. When something in life matters a lot you want to do it right. I boldly walked toward my new life, as directed in the reading of my daily devotional, and announced my impending retirement to my staff and board. Scary. It resulted in this nice message from my board of directors to the community:

"Dear friends, supporters, contributors and colleagues,

As the President of North Shore Community Resources it is with a sad heart that it falls to me to advise you that our beloved Executive Director, Li Boesen will be retiring after 15 years of leading North Shore Community Resources through many changes and achievements effective the Spring of 2015.

Under Li’s leadership, despite the fluctuating climate of the nonprofit sector, the agency demonstrated countless examples of success in program development and community collaboration. Li’s wisdom and people skills enabled her to build a strong staff team across diverse programming, resulting in a BC WorkLife Award of Merit and a North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award.

Li and her husband, Chuck, will begin their retirement adventure with a trek on the Camino de Santiago across Northern Spain and plan to live in a quiet community to further develop their artistic talents.

 The board of North Shore Community Resources has formed a search committee and retained the executive search expertise of Wayne Hanna and Associates to lead the recruitment process for the next Executive Director.

Please join me in thanking Li for her lifetime of dedication, energy and enthusiasm for our sector and our organization. We all wish her much success and happiness in her retirement."

Now that was a month!