New Teeth! New Smile! New Me!

It's been too many years.

Here I am! (ETA: Picture removed for safety reasons.)

Many Wonkette readers have followed my dental adventures and know it’s been a long, torturous journey for me. The biggest issue always being I couldn’t afford it. With changes to NY’s Medicaid I got coverage this year. In the past I had always made too much, just a few hundred bucks over the limit. Too poor to actually pay out of pocket and yet I made too much income(SS Disability) to get help. This past summer that all changed. (I have Medicare but they don’t consider teeth to be a part of your body that might need care.)

My teeth have always been a problem, starting with my baby teeth, coming in too weak to survive, requiring many dental visits at the age of 4 to cap my teeth in silver protection. I was a toddler with a shiny grill!

It didn’t help. My teeth were weak. As I grew up, got a job with real insurance, I kept going to the dentist and no one could stop the inevitable. I went through hard times, and found myself poor with no insurance. A tooth would rot and a dentist in the Bronx would pull it for fifty bucks. Eventually that stopped too.

The remaining teeth continued to decay, I fought infections continually, all the while losing precious bone as the infections would eat it away. Years of this. I tried a dental school but still couldn’t afford the $3,000 they wanted. So I suffered and waited.

This year saw changes to the limits that allowed people to be accepted into NY’s Medicaid. I got the letter I had been approved and I sobbed, I would do a bit more of that as the work started and I could feel hope. Not only were the infections in my few remaining teeth killing me, I couldn’t eat properly and I felt ugly. I got an appointment at the NYU Dental School and the adventure began.

I worked with a wonderful student and his sadistic, egotistical asshole of a teacher. But no one was stopping me now. Through 3 hour appointments and mouth molds that choked me I toughed it out. The year end approached and the final mold was in the lab. The dental school closed for the holiday on Friday, Dec. 15, after that and you are waiting till 2024. It was Thursday, Dec. 14 and I had given up.

Then I got THE CALL. It was my dental student, Farid, saying the dentures were ready, could I come in at 1:00pm tomorrow? FUCK YES. (I didn’t say “fuck” to him of course!)

It’s Friday Dec. 15, 1:00 pm and I am sitting in the dental chair. Farid sits next me and says I have bad news. You can’t take them home. Because we are not here next week they are not letting people take them because you might need an adjustment and it could be a liability if we aren’t here to help.

My response:

NO. FUCK NO. GIVE ME MY FUCKING TEETH.

Farid knew what I was going through and said let me see what I can do, I will talk to the director. I sat in the chair waiting and making a plan. I was leaving with my dentures. I grabbed my bag and jacket from the hook on the wall and put them between my legs. I knew the dentures were behind me. If the answer was still no, I was grabbing them and running. They would need to tackle my ass.

Farid returned and leaning in close said ok, you can take them home. The director approved it, but only for you. He handed me the dentures and said put them in your bag and walk out. Farid was my angel giving me a wonderful gift, putting himself on the line, I thanked him profusely and he said I was with you from the start and I want you to have them, I know what you’ve been through.

I walked out of the building and had to stop as it all hit me. Tears running down my cheeks, I touched the container in my bag and headed home.

Once home, I put them in my mouth and a smile I had forgotten came back.

I still have two implants that I will get starting in January, they are needed to anchor the lower plate which tends to move around because of your mouth structure. So the current fit isn’t perfect (the bottom plate is loose to allow space for the implants that it will snap over) so eating is still hard and I am learning to chew again, biting my lip several times as I worked my way through a slice of pizza. But it doesn’t matter, that will come. What has made me smile is that…

I got my real smile back.