This may be a topic more for the financial/insurance section, but I was wondering if some of you could pass along some advice on dental issues...

I'm about three months post-radiation and had a good teeth cleaning last week (which felt good in some respects but kind of beat me up in others)...

I was pretty "negative-active" with dental care in my 20's, and I went from being a no-cavity guy growing up to having lots of them now that I'm in my 30s, even before radiation/cancer diagnosis.

My dentist told me today that I have at least some type of cavity in all of my teeth except for four! Yikes! Some are bad and obviously need repairs/fillings/inlays. Others he shows me on the x-ray and frankly I don't know enough to know what it is I'm looking at. "As you can see, there is one here and here and here..." Uh, OK. I can't really see it, but you're the dentist...

Well, to make a long story short, he presents me today with his "plan" for fixing me all up. It requires seven visits (my worst nightmare!) and when finished will cost me something like $5,700 for all the inlays and fillings and what not. He's call it a "conservative" approach. The problem areas will be filled with porcelin, the others with a composite filling material.

It's not like I'm already in over my head enough paying for all the cancer treatments (even with good insurance I owe more than $3000 to doctors and hospitals right now, plus I lost an income source for the months I was in treatment)...

My current dental insurance has an 80-20 deal but will only cover up to $1,000 per year. I can't even come close to affording to $4,700 additional or whatever (considering I also had to buy a new car during my radiation treatment time because my IMRT treatments were done 90 miles away).

At the same point, since I've got some dry mouth issues, can I afford NOT to have this work done soon? Is he taking advantage of me by wanting to deal with every little imperfection with me teeth or helping me since I'm a cancer survivor now in greater danger of having tooth decay/serious dental issues.

I respect this dental office a lot -- they were the ones that first told me to "get that checked out" when I came in with a sore on my tongue. But, sheesh, who's got $5,700 lying around?

I'm baffled -- and frustrated I can't make a decent enough living to provide for my family and pay the bills... (and ticked at myself for my lack of dental care the past 5-10 years... arggg...)

Any thoughts from folks who have been down this road before? The good news is that I at least still have all of my teeth, though my mind at the moment is another story...

Tongue cancer (SCC), diagnosed Oct. 2003 (T2 N0 M0). Surgery to remove tumor. IMRT Radiation 30x in Dec 2003 - Jan. 2004. Recurrence lymph node - radical neck dissection June 2004. Second round of rad/chemo treatments ended Sept. 2004.