Forward motion is good!

I woke up this morning, resigned to the fact that I was going to have to spend yet another day on the phone with every dentist at which I could point my car. Not the case! For all you other applicants that have been checking in on my blog, especially those of you with no dental insurance, the ICD is DEFINITELY the way to go for the dental. One thing to note about the listing on the ICD website is that it is both out-of-date and generally inaccurate. Make sure to verify with the office that the address listed is correct (I came across 3 that were not). Every single office I talked to was extremely kind and as accommodating as they could possibly be...except for the office in Charlotte.

First of all, there is only 1 office in the Charlotte area that is an affiliate of this ICD program for PC Nominees. One! There are 3 in Greensboro and only one in Charlotte! Sadness. I called the Charlotte office and the woman huffed a bit when I told her what I was calling for and then proceeded to tell me that they could not get me in for an appointment until October 14th. More than a month away!??! I was a little shocked and felt my emotions head slightly in the direction of discouragement. I decided to make some phone calls to the plethora of offices in the Charleston area. 5 offices, to be precise.

The first office I talked to had to talk with the dentist and said she would call me back before the end of the business day. I called the next one and it was a fax number. The third was the charm and all good things started to happen after this phone call. They told me they could see me on the 8th. Fantastic! I went ahead and set up an appointment.

Then, I got to work on the polio booster dilemma. I called the SC Health Department. First, they couldn't find my shot records (ahhhh! Scary!). They found them and then we argued for a bit over the fact that I'd already had a polio shot and didn't need a booster. Yes, I know that and you know that...but the Peace Corps says differently. I was told it was going to be $55 and then was sent over to the Nurse Practitioner in order to verify that I could actually be given the shot. Got voicemail, left a message. She called me back and left me a message, telling me that she understood I was a Peace Corps Nominee and the polio booster would be no problem...and that it would be around $75. $20 increase in an hour? Immunization inflation, apparently. I'm going to make an appointment tomorrow.

A little while later, the dentist's office that I called first returned my call and asked I was available to come in tomorrow! Psh, take that, Charlotte clinic. Anyway, I can't drive down to Charleston tomorrow so I scheduled an appointment with them for the 8th (seems to be a good day...). I will cancel the first appt I made as I have a better feeling about this office.

So, lesson to be taken from this blog post:
Use the ICD if you don't have dental insurance! ICD for Peace Corps Nominees Website Here.
If you do the ICD thing, make sure to verify the address of the office!
The state health department will give you a polio booster but watch out for instant inflation!