Dental Diary

This post will detail my entire experience with the dental industry. I am an extremely needle and dental phobic 30 year old undiagnosed Aspergers case and a diagnosed medicated bipolar.

This post contains graphic images, and they may be used anywhere for non commercial purposes. CC share and share alike. (Personal blogs which generate ad money are commercial.) And please, host them somewhere else, hotlink only if you absolutely must. I am WAY poor. Food card, disability, several years unemployed. Etc. The relevance of that will be explained later.

A lot of this is from memory, so bear with me.

Beyond the childhood experiences, sealant (best decision ever and should be maintained through to death but is not for profit’s sake imo) small fillings which I don’t even remember getting, at all the first incident was wisdom tooth removal.

Wisdom Teeth

I had my wisdom teeth removed about a month before I was to go off my father’s insurance, back when dental actually somewhat paid for things.

They told me they would give me something that would make me forget the procedure, which I flatly refused, I wanted general surgical anesthetic, merely not remembering is not good enough because we simply don’t know what memory even is yet. For all I know it would have caused nightmares. (I have had two significant dental nightmares.)

When we threatened to leave because they tried to tell me general wasn’t an option they changed their tune. This is important because they must often be reminded they are a business and the customer has rights. The most powerful of which is exit. Insurance “network” requirements remove these rights in a very communist fashion, which is ironic in the context of the anti healthcare reform debate.

Current insurance is more socialist than a public option would be by every objective measure. Anyway…

Once it was made clear that I would simply not be experiencing the procedure, things went wonderfully.

I received a literally sensation free injection, not just painless, I watched it go in and felt nothing, like a mosquito landing was more detectable. The anesthesiologist with a flare for the dramatic started at 5 with her hand and gave me a finger dropping silent count down, I do not remember seeing 2, I woke up in the recovery room high out of my mind. I had no further pain from then on.

They gave me a prescription that would have drawn attention from the DEA these days just in case and antibiotics which I did take. The pain pills sat in my medicine cabinet for emergencies for years, finally whittled aware by migraines and family tooth pain.

This experience forever cemented in my mind how a dental experience SHOULD and COULD be form first pain to steak dinner.

Over ten year later I finally get a cavity that requires attention. As a youngster I foolishly (perhaps) rejected braces, on cosmetic and social grounds, this directly led to my most recent dental experience as of this writing. My teeth are packed so tightly together than I literally cannot floss about 80% of them.

I meticulously cared for them as best I knew how, mouth wash brushing, etc. But I did not know about water based flossing systems or interdental brushes until about a year ago. So naturally my current removal and huge cavity occurred between two teeth.

The issue first started over a year ago maybe two, when attempting to floss what I thought was a piece of shrimp shell out from between the teeth in question, after snapping four pieces of floss I finally managed to saw push my way down in there only to remove a tiny tiny piece of tooth that was causing the pain.

Well that scared the hell out of me, I knew it was too late, all I could do now was wait. Since I most certainly do not have the money to go see a dentist (I’ll have figures here shortly.) And even if I did, I wouldn’t, since also I was ignorant of the option of having regular work done under general anesthetic. Yea, that’s cleanings, fillings, everything. A sleep. Not, high, but out. Like take your kidney out, out.

Anyway, so I wait, and a couple months later the sensitivity to temperature started. I read everything there is to read about enamel, and the truthfulness of “rebuilding” Which is in effect a lie.

I’ll just say check out the wiki on the subject but a logic problem should make it pretty clear. If a any product actually rebuilt enamel, why don’t people’s teeth fuse together if these products are over used? Because tooth enamel is radically complicated, it’s a crystal grown on strands. If you thought nature was being stupid by putting nerves IN teeth, just wait till you read the methods it chose to put hard chewy things in our mouth.

Why we don’t shed teeth like sharks is beyond me, I guess god just hates us. Anyway…

I look into sent vie teeth tooth paste. This stuff actually works to a degree. Remember the strands I told you about? Microbes exploit gaps in the strands caused by degradation of the crystals that make up enamel, like Christmas lights on strings shrinking, the microbes force their way in between, permanently misaligning the strands so that when brushing and such kills the microbe and brushes away its body a small hole remains. Either to be reoccupied by a microbe, or in the case of desensitizing tooth paste, plugs the hole with something else something temporary.

Those tiny holes which aren’t exactly caries yet (dentist lingo cash code for cavity, kind of like “dentition” meaning teeth) allow temperature changes to be detected with far greater sensitivity by the tooth’s nerve than they should be, since humans are pretty much supposed to be dying around 30 as judge by how durable teeth are if left to their own devices. Teeth are so frail and stupid tooth care was probably developed just after fire. (sticks work)

If you keep those holes filled by regularly using sensitive tooth paste you safely plug those holes and maybe even prevent cavities since these inert plugging agents do not dissolve enamel crystals or make the hole bigger.

So I did, and I will continue to use Colgate enamel protect toothpaste for sensitive teeth. Now this stuff is hardly open source so I cant really dig into what’s going on, I have to ask people with a serious conflict of interest to explain it to me, but I do know from experience that it temporarily cured the sensitivity on the now failing tooth which bought me more low pain research time.

It is at this time that I turned to the internet seeking low income emergency dental care. I found almost none, and none at all for phobics. There is one group that will fly around to places and set up temporary free clinics and do dental stuff free or scaled. But that aren’t going to give me general even if I was willing to pay, they just didn’t bring it with them. The bottom line is in the united states there is simply no such thing as indigent dental care.

That’s a whole other rant, which I will link to. Read those before you try to “correct” me. I was a hacker for around 5 years, my research skills when I know to look for something, are well, excellent. And I assure you, thought things on the surface may look like emergency or “affordable” dental care options, a bit of digging will show them to not be. Again, most certainly not for full phobics.

Finally my father scraped up enough money to help me pay off my massive credit card debt (around $2,000) and I resolve to pay for the removal of this tooth out of pocket. Despite MASSIVE anger at this kind of extortion. I’ve had a kidney stone, and 4 broken bones, and persistent gal bladder attacks as well as blinding migraines, I know what pain is. But in all of those cases real doctors and the nurses they explo… I mean rely on.. were there to help me regardless of my income, because this is America dammit and most real doctors greedy or not also signed up to help people. In America we in theory don’t let people needlessly suffer.

Not so with dentists. They have cleverly separated themselves from the rest of the medical community. They have in effect cornered a market rather than merely become a medical specialty. Imagine the chaos if every branch of medicine did this and in turn utterly refused to provide indigent care. Anyway..

After deciding that I had about as much control over the matter as ted bundy did with choice of housing after his arrest, I ask dad to make me an appointment and make some calls. One of my issues is phone use.

It becomes clear that the going rate for having a tooth extracted under general, after you do the math and force them to define their terms and disclose ALL costs, which they are LOATH to do over the phone, is just shocking. And god help you if you want to email one of them.
In short order the toothpaste failed to do the trick, a study of ingredients and chemistry showed me that mouthwash often has the same substance used to strip rust off iron in it, phosphoric acid. I’ll leave the conspiracy speculation on that for another time.

Having learned about the way in which the paste works to prevent pain directly I decided that a more lasting solution was in order. So I applied a coat of super glue to the outside edge of my tooth where contact with cool fluids caused pain. This worked marvelously. I used this second batch of time to to further research the matters at hand.

After awhile I became expert at applying super glue, avoiding undue fume exposure, and shaping the end result. Not all glue is created equal, I recommend the following…

Gorilla glue, the gel kind that comes with a blue cap and a metal spine in the cap (says metal tip on the box).

A roll of clear packing tape, super glue will not stick to it, this allows you to press and shape.

A travel hair dryer for drying the glue quickly with warm air since cold air on a wet sensitive tooth is enough to make you tell them where the microfilm is.

Fit a funnel to the end of the hair dryer and choose a model with a momentary heat off fan switch, this way you can focus warm air and precisely control its temperature and air flow. Rubber bands as a fitting help.

Do you best to dry everything, Glue turned to a white ultra porous plastic that wont stick to anything when it gets wet before it sets, and gums WILL stick to teeth.

Do all of this in front of a fan blowing towards you from the side, inhale through your nose exhale through your mouth.

Try to make a hook out of a hanger or something that will let you easily hold your cheek away from your tooth. I made one I could wear so I had both hands.

Don’t be afraid to drool. Do this over a sink, just lean forward and let’er drip. Better that than distracting yourself.

Try to keep the glue off gum surfaces, the substance is not meant for this and will cause irritation, though like shaving, my gums got used to it.

Create a bite plate out of tape so you don’t glue your mouth shut.

If it drips somewhere it shouldn’t be just let it dry and remove it later, the stuff comes off pretty easily if you’re actually trying to remove it, unless it’s still moist.

Get used to starting over. I’m a dyslexic lock smith, which means I’m great with my hands and I’m used to doing things in reverse (as in the mirror) and I still had to restart about one per application.

Plastic tape a finger, for sculpting and smoothing and pressing.

The good news is a single application depending of course on the hole you’re patching, can last months, maybe even a year.

My last application helped up 3 months.

That’s how long it took all told you get my “emergency” taken care of. Had it not been for super glue and black market medication I’d have committed myself suicided or taken hostages. The potential pain level most people simply can not imagine. Except dentists, which is why they charge so much.

Basic pain killers and antibiotics cost me about 20-40$ a run, Now that will vary based on location and prescriptions of course.

Each instance of face time, with a dentist or surgeon, which in my case took an average of a minute, costs between 50$ and 70$, no wonder they don’t do email.

You don’t even get to speak to an oral surgeon typically without paying a dentist for a referral first. And oral surgeons can’t be so, until they are dentists, so good lucky finding one that will side with you against and absurd recommendation, unless of you’re loaded.

All told my removal so far has cost me. 195$ for the removal of the tooth, 200$ for 30 minutes of sleep time, 73$ for a consultation, 60$ for a consultation 65$ for a consultation 50$ for drugs. And about two to three months of time. No counting the time when I was not actively seeking care, money in hand.

If I wanted the tooth replaced with an implant that’s probably around 600$ worth of anesthetic, and I know for a fact is at least 1500$ for a post and a tooth, plus at least one more 73$ consultation.

So, to have a tooth pulled for a phobic is prohibitively expensive, and totally impossible for the unaided poor.

That said however the Surgeon I found, who was also the anesthesiologist. Was exceptionally skilled.
A thank you letter to him and his staff can be found here.

Here are the pictures. Both of the glue work and of the after math of the removal.

It’s obvious from the picture that I am not done with the costs. A huge hole was either made during the extraction, or was masked by its shape on the x-ray. It does not hurt as yet, but I will begin filling it with super glue as soon as I am healed enough and I will research what can be done in my case.

TinyBook

Support: heavy@heavy-online.ru
Web-site: http://heavy-online.ru/TinyBook/

LG600G plain text ebook reader instructions.

On Computer:
Decompress TinyBook.JAR renaming as a zip file if you have to.

Copy plain text book into folder.

Rename book to “book1.txt” or any number up to 9.

Book must have a blank line as it’s first line.

TinyBook.JAR may contain up to 9 books, maybe ten if you replace book.txt as well.

Recompress folder, rename back to TinyBook.JAR so now your books are inside the zip/jar.

Edit TinyBook.JAD with a text editor.

Look for line “MIDlet-Jar-Size: ######”

Change size to match exactly the newly created jar file.

Copy both files to the phone.

On phone:
Open the “other” folder. (Hit menu, then 7, then 6)

Highlight TinyBook.JAD and hit “ok” (center button of d pad)

It will compile and install.
It will ask about being trusted: allow it to continue.

It will ask you where to put it, games or applications: its up to you. I put mine in apps.

Now go to apps (open phone, left on the dpad, 2)

You should see tinybook as a choice.

Remember to set you bookmark before you close the phone.

Controls:
UP, DOWN – prev page, next page
“*” – set bookmark
“OK” (center d pad) – go to bookmark
“#” – exit

Here is mine with At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft as book1.txt

This works on linux mac or windows.