suffer a little longer, pay less?

One of the biggest problems with health insurance has to do with timing. We pay a premium for inconvenient illnesses. The human body is oblivious to time constraints and apparently has no reservations about breaking down when the emergency room is the only source of resolution. Fortunately, the internet can assist from time to time in letting us know if what is happening is truly an emergency or something that can wait until Monday morning. From a dental standpoint, there are also products that can help dull the pain of a bad toothache or lost filling until the dentist has assumed his regular hours again.

Back when I lived in Omaha, one of my coworkers lost a filling one day and was absolutely miserable. He wanted to go in an have it fixed, but the dentist wasn't available and it was going to cost him an arm and a leg for an after hours emergency appointment. He ended up dosing his tooth with Orajel for as long as he could stand it. If this were to happen today, he'd have a number of products to help tide him over until his dentist was available (and more affordable). One of these products is a temproary dental repair kit called Dentemp OS. It's like a do-it-yourself filling kit. It's like a little bucket of putty that you stick into the cavity and it sets within thirty minutes. You don't have to mix it or anything, as it is ready to use right from the container. Pretty neat stuff.

Another ideas to save yourself from the emergency room is super glue. Yes, you heard me correctly - you can use super glue to temporarily seal a bad cut. In fact, doctors have started using a product that looks like super glue on cuts that might normally require stitches. One evening, my daughter fell out of her bed and hit her head on her nightstand. We rushed her to the emergency room where we were sure she would, need stitches. Instead, the doctors "glued" her head back up and said that no stitches were required. Several years later, her forehead looks fine and you can barely see a scar.

Granted, there are cases when not going to the emergency room can be more risky and I certainly don't advise that you ignore serious symptoms just to save money, but little things like cuts and toothaches can usually wait another day or two as long as you have something conveniently on hand to deal with the pain and can keep the area clean and contained.