My parents live in Portugal: can their care and mine be done at the same time?

Anyone living in Switzerland counts treatment in visits: how many, on what dates, how many days each time. It is a legitimate calculation, and it is why whole pages are devoted to it.

Parents who stayed in Portugal do not make that calculation. They live in the country, and for them an appointment is a morning. The question seems to be about fitting two diaries together, but it is most often resolved the other way round: there is no need to fit them. The mother's and the father's can follow the pace of their treatment, and that of the person who left the pace of their trips.

In Switzerland, basic insurance does not cover dental care in practice. There is therefore nothing to pool between two people in the same family: each treatment is paid for in its own right, and what one pays does not reduce what the other will pay. The question ‘how much for both’ becomes a sum, not an administrative procedure.

Each has their own diagnostic consultation with a 3D X-ray, their own written plan, their own consent. The plan is never a family one: it is individual. Father, mother and child can leave the same day of consultations with three different plans, of different durations and different amounts.

The durations published by the Instituto AreLuna give the order of magnitude. A single implant is counted as two to three appointments plus about three months of osseointegration; a full-arch rehabilitation as one surgery plus two to three follow-up appointments. What applies to one or the other depends on a prior individual assessment and diagnosis, and is not known before the examination.

It changes the most costly part for the one who left: the follow-up appointments. Living on the spot means going there without an air ticket. The months between a surgery and a final prosthesis, which are a scheduling problem for one person, are for the others time spent close to home.

The opening hours, on the other hand, make no concession to someone coming from Switzerland. The Instituto AreLuna sees patients Monday to Friday, from 09:30 to 19:00, and is closed at weekends; dental care is provided at the establishment at Rua de Júlio Dinis, 194, 4050-327 Porto. For the parents, that changes almost nothing. For the child who left, every appointment falls on a working day, and every day spent at the practice is a working day taken off in Switzerland. The first stay for an implant surgery is, moreover, at least three days, a length that depends on a prior individual assessment and diagnosis.

That is where a shared timetable makes sense again. Having the parents' appointments fall, as far as the diary allows, on the days when the child is already in Porto avoids taking further leave to accompany them. And if it is a brother, a sister or a neighbour who stayed in the country who drives them there and back, the same constraint applies to them: with no appointments at weekends, a weekday has to be freed.

Whether two people's appointments can fall on the same day is a question of diary, and the answer belongs to the practice and not to this page: nothing published says how many people can be seen at the same time. It is asked when booking, on +351 220 430 090, with the travel dates in front of you.

One thing remains that no diary settles. The parents are patients in their own right: they are the ones who hear the plan, who ask the questions left unanswered and who consent. Making the appointments, accompanying them and even paying the bill gives nobody the right to decide in place of a capable adult. The person who organises does a great deal — everything, except that part.