Stagis Mark W, DDS

Oh boy. Watch these guys! Here’s their game: When you go in to see them, step one is to take a full-​color, high resolution picture of your normal human teeth with their old, discolored fillings. Then they confront you with the ghastly truth, magnified on the computer screen. Gasp! It’s not pretty. Your mouth is just like the nasty «before» pictures posted all over the office, contrasted with the properly crowned and beautified movie-​star teeth treated by Stagis and Vick. If at that point you’re not begging for a full mouth overhaul, Stagis and Vick have a plan «B». They told me most of my teeth were cracked and had better be crowned immediately, or at least within the next six months, or my fillings would be falling our left and right, and I’d be needing root canals all over. The receptionist also urged me to get those mercury fillings out of my mouth. «When a filling accidently falls on the floor here, we call hazmat to pick it up! That’s how toxic it is!!» And oh, they’re so gracious and friendly, and their office is spic and span, and their academic credentials so distinguished, and their equipment so cutting edge.
But they were proposing a $ 10,000 treatment plan. It was near Christmas and I have two small kids and preferred not to break the bank just then. So it seemed reasonable to get a second opinion. The next dentist said my fillings were old but perfectly good… in fact, he complimented the dentists who’d done the work. That’s how old fillings look: blackened and irregular. He said I needed NO WORK AT ALL. This was so bewildering that I sought yet another opinion. That dentist said the same thing: My teeth looked perfectly fine and should remain so for a while. It’s now a year and a half later. I stuck with the second dentist and had one filling replaced… that’s it.
I’ve learned a lot from this experience and hope you will, too.