Cost breakdown

One of the post-trip posts I wanted to do here is about how much my first trip to Costa Rica cost me, to give others a general idea of expenses.  I was there for two weeks, but stayed in hostels and cheap hotels so my accommodation expenses were fairly minimal (the most expensive hotel I stayed in was $45/night.)  I have also rounded numbers a bit, and everything is in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted.

Accommodations/travel within Costa Rica/tours/meals/souvenirs/gifts: $1420 (I did a fair bit of travelling – more on this in a later post)

Flight from Calgary: $1010 (actually $1060 after an extra $50 charge for a roomier seat on the plane flying back from San Jose to Denver…Frontier Airlines had overbooked the flight and said that was all there was left, so I didn’t have much choice but to pay extra or wait half a day for another flight.  I’m going to try hard not to fly with them again.  The rest of my flight, both ways, was through United and US Airways, and they didn’t give me any grief.)

Airport parking at Calgary for two weeks: $110

Dental costs**: $5310 (that’s incorporating their 5% charge for paying by credit, which is how I paid for most of it, and also this is based on what VISA actually charged me on my statement, not the official exchange rate)

Total so far: $7900

I plan to go back sometime this summer to get the crowns put on my implants, and that will cost another $1200 or so (for the dental part of things).  I expect my second trip will cost in the neighbourhood of $3K;  I don’t plan to go for as long or do as much touristy stuff the second time.

**More specifically: (the below is in US dollars and does not include the charge for using a credit card or the currency exchange fee VISA charges, both of which I did incorporate in my numbers above)

• General exam, X-rays, and cleaning: $125  (that includes a panoramic X-ray, which they do on the spot as they have the equipment on site)
• Bleaching: $250
• 6 porcelain crowns: $2100
• Gingivectomy: $200
• 1 post and core: $125
• 2 implants: $1550
• Medications: $70 (for post-implant surgery – these were antibiotics, pain meds, and medicated mouthwash)

I intend to do another post on my actual experience at the dental office, too…just figured I’d post on costs tonight as I’m getting together some receipts and stuff to send Blue Cross, in hopes that they’ll reimburse me for some of this (theoretically they will, for at least a little of it.  But we’ll see.)

To be continued –

I got back from Costa Rica Sunday night, and I intend to do a longish post or three about it.  Unfortunately, I also got a cold yesterday (too much travelling?), so don’t expect to see anything further here before the weekend.  By which time I hope I’ll be feeling much better, and will be able to get caught up on all sorts of things, this blog among them.

and…I’m off!

My flight to San Jose is tomorrow morning!

change of plans

Okay, I’ve changed my mind and am planning on seeing Dr. Anglada in Costa Rica after all.  It will be a relief when this is over and I can stop second-guessing myself!

I’m going to Costa Rica because…um…

I can tell people I’m going to Costa Rica in January.  I have a hard time explaining to most people just why I’m going.  Mostly I fall back on the unchallengeable “vacation” excuse.  Not that that’s not true, but it’s obviously far from the whole truth.

Perhaps I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about the state of my teeth, or the fact that I can’t afford to fix them here.  But…I do.  Maybe I’d have to be more open about it if people could actually see the missing molars, but as it is, they’re hidden and I can pretend everything’s just fine, as I have been doing for all of my life.

I did tell my sister why I’m going.  I have told a couple of friends, too.

And I told my mother, in a very neutral sort of way.  She was positive about my plans;  we did not discuss the reasons I need to do this.  I don’t understand why she doesn’t seem to feel any sort of guilt or regret over not providing her children with any dental care.  Or over the emotional neglect and abuse.  Maybe she’s just not that self-aware.  I don’t know…I never really understood her.  I call her every month or two, half out of a sense of duty, half because some part of me genuinely wants to talk to her, awkward as our conversations tend to be.  She never calls me;  all I get is an occasional email.  If it were up to her to maintain our relationship, we wouldn’t have one.  Maybe that would be better, I don’t know.    I barely have a relationship with my father, and there’s certainly less angst involved there.

One of the things I’m looking forward to about this whole Costa Rica thing is getting my teeth to the point where they’re not a continual reminder of a lot of things I’d really rather forget.  😦  Not forgive, maybe, but…let go of and move past.

Real People ™ and believing what you read online

Determining whether someone online is a Real Person or just a spammer/astroturfer/sockpuppet can sometimes be problematic, as I was just discussing with Carol in comments.  For the record, I’d like to say I’m happy to talk to people over the phone, or meet for coffee* as long as it’s in throwing distance of where I live (Edmonton, Calgary, or points in between).  I don’t yet have personal experience with any dentists in Costa Rica, but I will next year – I’ve booked my first flight for January!

*Metaphorically speaking.  Coffee is a nasty-tasting beverage.  😉  I’ll stick with tea or cocoa, thankyouverymuch.

LoMasTV – online Spanish videos with captions

This is a very cool website.  I think I’m going to subscribe, now that I’ve watched their sample videos.  They have tons of videos (including TV clips and music videos), all with Spanish and English subtitles.  You can click on any word in the Spanish subtitles to look it up at the same time as you’re watching the video.  You can even click on a “Slow” button to slow the video down if they’re talking too fast!

It looks like an awesome resource for me.  My Spanish is quite rusty, but I seem to have retained enough of it in my subconscious that I’m finding beginners’ Spanish lessons to be really boring.  Even though I can’t necessarily come up with most of the words or grammar rules myself, I recognize them when I see them.  I need a refresher more than I need actual instruction.

Plus, this looks reasonably entertaining, so I’ll be more inclined to spend time with it.  And it should help my oral comprehension skills, which have always lagged behind my reading/writing comprehension skill level – I’m much faster at learning the written form of a language than the spoken form.

Some people might consider it overkill to spend this much effort on language learning – I’m only visiting Costa Rica, not moving there – but I like languages, and I don’t actually mind working on my Spanish.  It’ll be cool to be able to practice it with native speakers, when I go.  I don’t get that opportunity here;  Spanish speakers are few and far between most places you go in Canada.  (I have noticed that there is a significant and noticeable increase in the presence of Spanish even a little bit south of the border, but it doesn’t seem to trickle north of the 49th parallel.  I just looked it up – only about 1% of our population speaks Spanish as a mother tongue, and half of them live in Toronto or Montreal, nowhere near me.)

Why Costa Rica?

I’ve started this blog for two reasons:  one, to chronicle my upcoming trip to Costa Rica for dental work, and two, to possibly help out anyone else who, like me, might be looking for any info they can find from someone who has done this!

At some point in the near future I will also add a resource page of all the useful links I have found on this topic.  🙂

Why am I doing this at all?  Well…

Travelling to another country for medical work is a scary thing, and I never seriously considered it until a few months ago.  But I did know that I needed reasonably extensive dental work, and I finally went and got a cost estimate for it all…$21,000!

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.  *wry*  At least, not without saving up for quite a while.

(I know, twenty grand is a piddling thing compared to the cost quotes some of the people I’ve read about online in the past few months have been given!  It is, however, lots more money than I have.  And my Blue Cross plan won’t cover much of it.)

Now, I am pretty sure I could shop around and find a somewhat cheaper dentist here in Canada, but “somewhat” isn’t going to cut it.

So…I started looking abroad!  First at Mexico, then at Costa Rica, which I’m leaning toward at the moment.  I am seriously considering the CLEO office (where Dr. Anglada is the implant specialist – the major part of the work I need involves implants.  I also need a few crowns, and while I’m at it, I might just go for porcelain veneers too.)  I have found some very positive comments online about Dr. Anglada, and no negative stories at all (not the case with a few of the other dentists I researched!)

Next step:  I need to get my hands on some X-rays of my teeth and send them off, to see what Dr Anglada has to say.  I suspect that the cost of the dental work in Costa Rica, plus travel costs, will be half of what my Canadian dentist quoted me!  And I’ll get a couple of vacations out of it, too (I expect I’ll have to go back six months later to finish up the implants.)

Watch this space for further updates…