dental work

[pdx]

Let me introduce myself. I am an SNA candidate headed for Pensacola on 05 Feb 05. This is my first post here, but I have been lurking around for a while.

My question is about dental requirements. About a week ago I had a mountain biking accident, ate some gravel, and broke one of my molars. I don't have any pain or other problems. I would love to wait a few months and let the Navy pay to fix it. Still, I don't want to take any chances with NOMI. Could I possibly get NPQ'd for a broken tooth? Would I be better off to just go to a dentist, pay the $$$ and not say anything to the Navy?

 

[VetteMuscle427]

I believe the only requirements for dental are that there are no impedements to your breathing, and that you have enough teeth left to do dental work. ie, you dont have dentures. I just seem to remember reading that somewhere when I was taking my physical.

 

[ben]

I have absolutely no idea what the Navy's stance on your injury will be. However, from a personal standpoint, I would definitely want my mouth to be 100% good to go by the time I report to Pensacola. That's just me though.

 

[Thisguy]

The big question I guess is how long a procedure like this takes. The dental checkup at OCS is sorta half-assed, but if they see a cracked molar, it may not NPQ you from flight, but honestly, it wouldn't shock me if they rolled you for that (I doubt they'd do the procedure the same day they find it, and hold you out of physical activity, etc.). We had a guy roll because he had a uh..ahem, rash, which meant he couldn't get into the pool, which rolled him because he was unable to pass the swim.

 

[jbgood00]

PDX... I just wanted to say welcome to the board and let you know there is a thread for "our" class under the class section of the website.

 

[NotABusDriver]

By this time, you probably have had your situation resolved but I wanted to add some advice because I was in a similar situation last September.

I was in a rugby game playing in northern minnesota last fall when I messed up my teeth. I was running downfield when my front teeth got introduced to some guy's skull. I got 6 teeth knocked inward which felt extremely awesome. They managed to save the teeth, but I needed splints and 6 root canals. My follow up work was finally completed 3 days ago (at last...). My injury, which is similar to yours in most cases and may even be worse, was not a showstopper and I was told this within a month of getting hurt. So if I made it okay, I dont foresee yourself having any problems.

Another thing, your recruiter or go-to-guy may have told you this already, but be sure to get all medical documentation related to your injury sent to the right people pronto. Even if it is preliminary and there is a lot of dental work still to do, they will want it. They were constantly getting me worked up about getting it sent in, so I would recommend giving the release of information forms to your dentists after every meeting to save yourself an hour of phone tag and faxing cr@p.

Cheers