D
Deleted member 18582
Poet laureate of the deep state
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- Mar 25, 2022
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To consult jaw surgeons for bimax you need the appropriate scans. This is infinitely easier said than done. In reality it is a nightmare a thousand times more kafkaesque and byzantine than even the most backlogged offices of the French bureaucracy
Now I have everything and I sent it to who I need to. I swear to god if there was something wrong with the scans I am going to
- I am advised I need a head CT or CBCT scan and that these are obtainable at an orthodontist's office, and that they can be done at a free initial consultation. I contact around 10 such offices for a consultation. Only two are willing to email me the files of my scan afterwards. The other eight say I need to become a registered patient and pursue treatment with the orthodontist, or they won't email me the scans they would be taking anyway at the initial free consultation. They also give me a big attitude over this request.
- I manage to get a scan at one of these places and they give it to me on a CD in the Year of the Rabbit 2023. I have, like everyone else, no way of reading a CD at home. I then have to go to a local electronic store, buy a USB drive, and ask them to burn the CD onto my USB drive. For this I pay $30.
- But it turns out, even though the orthondist's office told me "this scan will suffice for jaw surgery," the scan was too low resolution and they did not scan my entire head, so all the above was for moot.
- I then get a referral from a jaw surgeon for a very specifically delineated 3D CT head scan and dental impressions.
- For the latter, I contact a dozen dentists and orthodontists to see if they can do this scan for me, referral in hand and everything. I contact about 15. 13 of them say if I want this scan I must become a registered patient and pay initial consultation fees (~$300) and even then even then will not send the scan directly to me but to the surgeon, whereas of course, you know the way it works with consulting aesthetics-oriented plastic surgeons is that they want to review your scans before you become their patient. Again, the receptionists of the 13 places that do not do this end up sounding exasperated over the phone that I am not, I don't know, simply getting my teeth cleaned or getting braces or something. The way they all say "You must have an initial consultation and cleaning first if you want to have that scan done" in such a haughty manner is really peculiar.
- At the two I manage to find it at, one charges $200 for the dental impressions and the other $100. I go with the latter. As if my divine intervention they do not hand me a disc but simply EMAIL me the file
- I then make arrangements to get my CT scan done. I call about 6 places. 4 of them seem utterly bewildered at the CT scan request and say they cannot do it saying "WE DO NOT PERFORM THIS TYPE OF SCAN - 3D HEAD". 1 of them says it will cost $1200. Another says it will cost $300, so I go with the latter. Although I am still left with a nagging sense of doubt as to why this plcae was charging so much more than the other, worrying I signed myself up for the wrong scan
- I go get my CT scan done at the latter place. Evidently, there was an error burning the scan to the disc afterwards, so I have to wait 45 minutes longer while she burns it again to another one
- Then I go to the electronics store to have the CDs burned to my USB drive. The almost entire staff of boomer hobgoblins they have working the front this time are chronically unable to accomplish this. I ask him to make two folders on the USB drive and put the contents of each disc in each folder. He looks at me with a blank stare, in awe at the extraordinary difficulty of such a request. and after doing the same with 2 other people I finally come across an employee that knows how to move the contents of a CD onto a USB drive.
Now I have everything and I sent it to who I need to. I swear to god if there was something wrong with the scans I am going to
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