Lori: Save $$$...let your kids do their own dental work!

[Chowder Head]

All i could think of when reading that story was, don't these people know you can die from infected teeth.

[HoneyBunny]

Love the comment about that ebil Australian health care. Fundies and conservatives hate when that gets mentioned.

Unless the rules have changed, I thought retired reservists qualified for Tricare and dental (Delta Dental?) when they turn 60. You might check.

We could get dental insurance through the military (retired Army) but it's not the best. Instead we pay more for a policy that maxes out its payments at $3000 per person per year, instead of $1500, which most do. Still, our dental costs every year are crazy huge. I always say there are only two places I go where they say "That will cost eleventy hundred dollars" and I don't say, "Hell to the no!!!": dentists and car repair shops.

My parents had not much and I had the crookedest teeth in the world until I got my own dental insurance at 21 and got braces but at least I was never forced into self-dentistry. That's the good thing about fundie-following...I feel better and better about my own childhood with every blog post I read.

[Loveday]

Love the comment about that ebil Australian health care. Fundies and conservatives hate when that gets mentioned.

Unless the rules have changed, I thought retired reservists qualified for Tricare and dental (Delta Dental?) when they turn 60. You might check.

We could get dental insurance through the military (retired Army) but it's not the best. Instead we pay more for a policy that maxes out its payments at $3000 per person per year, instead of $1500, which most do. Still, our dental costs every year are crazy huge. I always say there are only two places I go where they say "That will cost eleventy hundred dollars" and I don't say, "Hell to the no!!!": dentists and car repair shops.

My parents had not much and I had the crookedest teeth in the world until I got my own dental insurance at 21 and got braces but at least I was never forced into self-dentistry. That's the good thing about fundie-following...I feel better and better about my own childhood with every blog post I read.

We do, but as you said, not til DH turns 60. People who retire from active duty get benefits immediately, reservists don't. Although DH served on active duty for a long time, he left the Navy and then came back as a reservist and served another ten years or so in that capacity (with some active duty thrown in there a couple of times). So...we wait. And we do have Delta Dental, as a matter of fact, but we're paying around $100 a month for it. As I said, not prohibitive, but I sure wish it was $26! :lol:

[itsnotmeitsu]

What a cheap A-hole. I just had a tooth pulled out by an oral surgeon--ant that is who pulls your teeth if they're tricky, not an orthopedic surgeon-- and it was $10 after my insurance kicked in. And that was with my script for pain meds. With no insurance it would have been $120. That is still affordable. Quivers full of children aren't cheap. You have to pay to play.

[guidedbybobafett]

WHAT. This is what happens when you have a relatively weak education and neglect to do even the most minor research- dental problems can become major problems relatively quickly, and can actually kill you. So way to be a responsible parent!

[lawlifelgbt]

Dental problems can be really serious! I had an infected tooth when I was a college freshman, and I ignored it for a long time because it didn't hurt, I didn't want to miss class to go two hours home each way to fix it, and I didn't know if/what to do in my college town re:treatment.

I ended up having a really high fever, even though most everything else was normal- when I finally went to the dentist, they freaked out and gave me a huge initial dose of antibiotics, because I'd left it long enough to be really dangerous.

Would you want that to happen to a child, who can't understand or decide?

[DGayle]

Seriously, just what the fuck??? Is she really reposting the story of a woman who was so anxious to pay off the fucking house that she let her kid do her own dental work? Really??? :evil:

35~ Last year the dentist told me that Abbie had a problematic tooth which wouldn't come out without going to an orthopedic surgeon. As I mentioned before, we don't have dental insurance. So Art told Abbie he would give her $10 if she got that tooth out. I prayed and prayed, while she pried and poked at that tooth all summer. Finally, at the end of the summer, she got the tooth out! I'll never forget how excited we were. Now she has to have orthodontist work, but we have been praying and saving.

I am just sick. Who the hell does that?

How desperate was that girl to have a little bit of money to call her own that she spent all summer working on getting her own tooth out? Also you can go to a county dentist and they'll extract most teeth, even wisdom teeth, for $25-$50.

The excitement over this is nauseating.

[Mama Mia]

How desperate was that girl to have a little bit of money to call her own that she spent all summer working on getting her own tooth out? Also you can go to a county dentist and they'll extract most teeth, even wisdom teeth, for $25-$50.

The excitement over this is nauseating.

I think that must be a service that varies by area. In my area any kind of subsidized dental clinic has a HUGE wait. And getting teeth pulled without insurance is several hundred dollars. Just the co-pay, with insurance, for my daughters wisdom teeth was four or five hundred.

[DGayle]

I think that must be a service that varies by area. In my area any kind of subsidized dental clinic has a HUGE wait. And getting teeth pulled without insurance is several hundred dollars. Just the co-pay, with insurance, for my daughters wisdom teeth was four or five hundred.

Trick is to go to a walk-in clinic where you have to be there first thing in the morning. You may have to sit there all damned day waiting, which turns some people off. If you want an appointment, you're going to have a long wait. The county walk-in clinic offers limited services, just fillings and extraction, but it's cheap. You're not getting crowns or root canals, just basic fillings and pulled teeth, and you can expect to wait all day. Around here, I know a few people who say there's nowhere to get a low-cost filling, but they also won't consider the inconvenience of waiting around all day. So it's more like there's nowhere up to their snuff.

The county walk-in is NOT advertised here. It's busy enough without putting word out to make more people aware.

[jerichojones]

We don't always charge.

My dad is a dentist and owns the practice, and I trained as a DA so I could assist on weekend and out of hours call outs. Now that I'm able to use eftpos, we charge more often (and my mum had something to do with dad's willingness to charge now), but when we first started, it was often a case of "we'll send out the invoice on monday" or "call up and we'll sort it out later"

When someone is in pain, we're not going to prevent treatment just because they can't pay.

Often, we just give antibiotics anyway because it's difficult to do an extraction when there is infection as it's more difficult to use anaesthetic.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

I really hope this poor child wasn't in pain. This kind of shit makes my blood boil, because even if this story was of a minor problem that was solved before real intervention was needed, it's presented as a cop-out for other idiot parents to neglect their child's dental needs.

My poor kid got double-whammied. I have perfectly straight teeth but very weak enamel, thanks to genetics (I seriously don't think I'll have any of my original teeth by the time I'm 50, at the latest). My husband has very strong enamel, but crooked teeth (his favored younger brother got braces; he did not). When we had her, our biggest wish out of any of our genetic traits was for her to get his enamel and my straightness, but alas, she got the exact opposite. She's 8 and we have a small fortune invested in her mouth already because insurance only goes so far, and I'm so terrified of what the future holds with orthodontia.

All I know is that I will never let her experience even a fraction of the pain I've known with putting off a dental visit. Holy fuck, I'd rather break my toe again than know that pain myself. It's not something to mess around with, which is something I've learned the hard way. I have a crippling fear of the dentist. I need gassed just to let them do a cleaning.

[Coconut Flan]

Since they were talking orthodontics and a "problematic" tooth, my guess it was a baby tooth that wasn't releasing and was going to cause the permanent tooth to be malpositioned if it wasn't out soon.

[Mama Mia]

Trick is to go to a walk-in clinic where you have to be there first thing in the morning. You may have to sit there all damned day waiting, which turns some people off. If you want an appointment, you're going to have a long wait. The county walk-in clinic offers limited services, just fillings and extraction, but it's cheap. You're not getting crowns or root canals, just basic fillings and pulled teeth, and you can expect to wait all day. Around here, I know a few people who say there's nowhere to get a low-cost filling, but they also won't consider the inconvenience of waiting around all day. So it's more like there's nowhere up to their snuff.

The county walk-in is NOT advertised here. It's busy enough without putting word out to make more people aware.

Yeah, that sounds well worth the wait. We don't have one here unfortunately.

[Coconut Flan]

Who knew? I found our county emergency dental service. Thankfully I have dental care, but it's good to know in case I run into someone who needs it.

[mockingbird]

Trick is to go to a walk-in clinic where you have to be there first thing in the morning. You may have to sit there all damned day waiting, which turns some people off. If you want an appointment, you're going to have a long wait. The county walk-in clinic offers limited services, just fillings and extraction, but it's cheap. You're not getting crowns or root canals, just basic fillings and pulled teeth, and you can expect to wait all day. Around here, I know a few people who say there's nowhere to get a low-cost filling, but they also won't consider the inconvenience of waiting around all day. So it's more like there's nowhere up to their snuff.

The county walk-in is NOT advertised here. It's busy enough without putting word out to make more people aware.

Dental schools usually have clinics with lower prices, too.

And yeah, dental pain is THE WORST. I don't know if it's just because my teeth were so misaligned, but my braces hurt like hell and it would get referred to my nose/ears too. My retainer still hurts to wear even if I've been wearing it every night. I should have an ulcer from the amount of ibuprofen I took for my braces :lol: I think I have a high pain tolerance too - dental pain just sucks! If that poor girl was in any pain, it was so cruel to make her wait. :(

[Burris]

Can I contribute a slightly different comment on Lori's post??? Now, I'm only going by the information that the girl had a "problematic" tooth than needed to be removed. We don't know if it was infected, or simply growing in the wrong spot, etc.

I've known kids who have teeth that are growing in the wrong way, or have a baby tooth that simply isn't falling out when it should. Their dentist will tell them that the tooth needs to come out, and either they can try to let it loosen up and fall out on their own (especially in the case of baby teeth), or the dentist can pull it on the next visit. So, not knowing all the details of this particular girl, I don't know if wiggling it out at home was the best choice, but I do know that often kids have teeth that are easier (and safe) to loosen up at home. And for all we know, the "going to an oral surgeon" part could have been the dentist conveying what the worst case scenario would be if the tooth didn't fall out soon.

I had a couple of “problematic†teeth as a child. My parents did nothing, and so my adult teeth came in every which way. If a dentist can pull a difficult tooth, then just do it already. The only reason to wait is if you don't care about the oral health of your children.

[precious_one]

Luckily, I live near a very good university that a has a great dental program. So when my daughter needed braces and we had no dental insurance she went there. It cost a fraction of what a private orthodontist would charge. At first, I was skeptical of the treatment but when I found out that a dental professor checked every thing the dental students did that made me feel better. We did have to spend a little time there but it was worth to me.

Also, I have had several tooth aches and giving birth natural was a lot less painful to me. So I hope the case was a wait and see but I as a parent would never have encouraged my children to pull their own teeth after a dentist suggested a need for an oral surgeon.

I have a friend who has pissed me off because lack of dental care for her son. She even has dental insurance but only takes him to urgent dental care if he is in serious pain. Then she never follows up on his care once the pain is gone. Both times she has taken her son to urgent dental care they tell her he needs the tooth pulled by an oral surgeon because it is so impacted. She told me that since it is a baby tooth it will eventually fall out. Maybe I should direct her to Lori for dental advice!!

[Coco]

Also, I have had several tooth aches and giving birth natural was a lot less painful to me. So I hope the case was a wait and see but I as a parent would never have encouraged my children to pull their own teeth after a dentist suggested a need for an oral surgeon.

Amen to that. At least with birth you know it's going to be over within at least a day one way or another, with an awesome reward. :D Tooth pain is constant with no end in sight. A little debt is worthwhile to relieve so much suffering. Once again QF peeps get themselves into a bind because of too many children to care for well when health gets a little pricey.

[Laurabelle]

Every time I see a Lori-centric thread on here, I read it thinking, “there’s no way, this must be an exaggeration, she can’t be this crazy†---and then I go read her blog and want to :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: . No, Laura, she really is that crazy. I just….can’t… :pink-shock: :pink-shock: :angry-banghead:

[usmcmom]

Every time I see a Lori-centric thread on here, I read it thinking, “there’s no way, this must be an exaggeration, she can’t be this crazy†---and then I go read her blog and want to :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: . No, Laura, she really is that crazy. I just….can’t… :pink-shock: :pink-shock: :angry-banghead:

Not only is she crazy, she's sneaky. Something about the following exchange irks me considering the whole "hole in the diaphragm" plot she boasts about. This a comment from today's post, along with her reply.

Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen = my dream life. And because I was intentional about what I wanted, I got it. I love being a stay at home wife and mother!

Lori Alexander:

I made sure I married a man that wanted this for me also, Lindsay. I think this is so important and needs to be discussed BEFORE marriage.

Really, Lori? REALLY? You married a man who wanted that for you? And it was discussed before marriage? Then why the need for being so sneaky with your birth control?

[FloraKitty35]

Lori will next advise us on to give oneself a colonoscopy on the cheap. Simply eat a box of Ex Lax , lube up with a tube of KY Jelly, get a flashlight, shove the flashlight into the rectum, and finally insert the head and have a look see up there.