I had a canine tooth crack into two pieces and could have had a bridge but didn't like the idea so had an implant. The local guy is an arrogant SOB so I made 3 round trips of 400 miles each to someone else. The first trip was to pull the tooth and put powdered corpse bone in the socket. In a few months that fused and a TI shaft with a threaded orifice was embedded in the new bone. After a month or so a tooth was fitted on the post with a very small bolt. There was a tiny trap door type dealiebob so that if it broke or failed in some way they could unscrew the bolt and put on a new tooth. That was over 5 years and it's hard to remember which tooth it was, it has been so trouble free. Even with dental insurance it was over $3k. The initial extraction hurt like hell and my jaw swelled up like a chipmunk, definitely reducing my manly beauty, but the next two were no big deal. My wife went along to spend a lot of money in the grocery stores there since they carried things not found in our little town. They have a great kabob (how we spell it ) place and a nice creperie, so we'd make a day of it, although I always ate before the dentist. Both these places had Al fresco seating so our little pooch didn't have to stay in the car and cook. The creperie even brought her a little plate of bacon, which we let her have on this one occasion, and which she thought was the greatest. Was it a pain in the tuchus to drive 1200 miles for this procedure.... you bet, but we had fun and I didn't give the SOB a penny. Sometimes you gotta vote with your wallet.
big
deal.