Precision?

# Chapter 304

The primary difference in the Western worlds and the Eastern ones, is precision. The West expects a much higher degree of precision and perfection. The West expects things to work the first time and not need additional adjustments. This is not how things work, at least not in the Slavic worlds I have worked in over the last 28 years. You could call it the tale of two teeth.

I recently had five antique crowns replaced, and the cavities around them removed. They made four classic studio molds of my teeth and sent them in to make the crowns. Exactly a week later, after not being able to eat because of no teeth, they came in thank goodness, and I went back to the dentist. She had to modify, drilling, reshape and work on each of them to get a good fit, even though they had a perfect model to work from. But in the end, she finally got them in, and now I am back to eating.

When we decided to make the USA our primary home one year and nine months ago, I was in need of a root canal and filling. Our former dentist in the states had retired and so I asked him for a recommendation. Made an appointment. Went in and had the entire procedure done in one visit! Unbelievable. All digital pictures, sent to a machine in the other room, which formed a perfect ceramic filling that perfectly fit the slot. Except it didn’t . . . precisely, since it has come out of that slot four times in the year and a half since I had the work done.

The USA ceramic filling cost more than all the dental work I had done in Eastern Europe, and it comes out when flossing about once every five months! The question I am constantly asking myself is, is the price of that precision which isn’t so precise, worth it? No was my conclusion and that is why I ended up coming back here to get the crowns done. In the USA, they only wanted $11, 600.00 to get those “precisely” done.