This Bites (Updated)

Waiting For The Pants To Dry

I was up around 1p.m. and ready to go introduce myself to the dental clinic that had been assigned to me through the "Healthy Blue" plan which is part of, I assume, the medicaid program.

First, I had to wash a pair of jeans in the bathtub, using dish washing liquid, then throw them in the oven, before setting it to about 210 degrees.

Saturday, I had started to get a toothache, and it felt like it was going to turn into one of those abscessed situations where the whole side of my face would swell up. There was a throbbing pain below the gum line, and I could sense that my whole immune system was kicking into gear.

In the past, I had waited until the pain was unbearable, before going to any emergency room. They had always drained it, then given me antibiotics and told me I should set an appointment to have the tooth pulled, because it would only be a matter of time before it became infected again.

Exceptional Dental looks good, "Except" for one dentist looking frighteningly like Brian Stetzer from CNN

Sometimes it was a couple years before that happened. A couple years of me procrastinating upon setting the appointment. Sometimes, it wouldn't even be the same tooth that started aching two years later...

This time, my tooth was hurting so much Saturday that I got some BC Powder and spent a good hour doing the Wim Hof breathing exercises, and then in the evening, I got the idea to soak some face cloths in very hot water and press them against my face where the pain was. I figured that I would be doing the same thing that the body does when creating a fever; putting the invading bacteria at a disadvantage, while helping the body's own defenses.

Now that I think of it, I haven't had any tooth problems since the last time I was donating plasma regularly.

Wim Hof might say that my body is capable of completely killing of the infection; probably in just 15 minutes; but, since I'm not to the point where I am submerging myself in frigid water, through a hole cut out of an ice covered lake for 3 minutes after having expelled all the air in my lungs every morning, like Wim does, I'm going to go to the clinic to see if I can at least get some antibiotics, if not an appointment to have the tooth pulled.

"Let the body do what the body is capable of doing..."

I'm to the point where I should probably have them all pulled out and then get some kind of dentures. The only thing that has been keeping me from doing that was worrying about how it might effect my singing and even my harmonica playing, as I might have developed my harp technique around the way my teeth are now.

It's now about time to go up to Exceptional Dentistry. The jeans are dry enough.

One of the other residents here, after I told him I was thinking of going to the emergency room, told me that they were not even going to see me, not even take my blood pressure, and that the emergency room is only for gunshot wounds now; and that even health insurance doesn't cover "dental" now.

What was weird was how he had yelled all that at me, without any regret in his tone. He didn't seem sorry to have to give me the news, but rather seemed to be reveling in the opportunity to heap abuse upon someone else.

"Go, ahead, go to the emergency room; you'll see! They probably won't even let you in; their not going to do a thing for you! I had to pay $1,500 to have a tooth pulled! Insurance doesn't cover it anymore! Go ahead, I invite you to go down there!"

That did have the effect of making me decide not to go there, even though it's always better to hear things from the horse's mouth. 

They way they treat that guy might have more to do with him individually. 

He was left a bunch of money by a relative, but it is under the control of his caseworker, who only gives him a little bit of it each week. Maybe someone unscrupulous saw the chance to get $1,500 out of him for a tooth extraction, taking advantage of the pain that he was in, combined with his feeble mental state.

Back From The Place

The Exceptional Dental place told me right off the bat that they no longer deal with the "Healthy Blue" plan that I am apparently still signed up with, and they gave me the number and location of another Exceptional place, about 3 miles from my apartment, that does.

I then went to Rouses Market just for some alkaline water and some juice, plus a Celsius "Heat" energy drink, the thought of which was about the only thing that elevated my mood.

One of the good things about the tooth ache has been that I have withdrawn from all "intoxicants" except for caffeine. 300 mg. per can of Celsius, on that head.

But, 3 days of what has mostly been juice fasting, and deep breathing exercises, has already got me thinking of doing a massive cleaning and de-cluttering of the apartment. 

The heightened sense of smell that comes on about the 3rd day of juice alone has made me aware of a slightly foul odor coming from my refrigerator, probably from stuff that has spilled or leaked in it, which the cold temperature has retarded the spoilage of, but only to a point...

The fevered state that I slept in, was giving me crazy dreams, and reviving old memories, none of them good. That was the reason I had to wash some clothes to wear to the dentist, because I had woken up sweating and shivering off and on, in the clothes I had slept in.

"The infection can get into the brain," the lady at the dental place had said.

She had tried to see if there was anything they could do for me, but me showing up at 3:30 p.m. when they close at 5, kind of precluded that. Waiting for my jeans to dry in the oven was what killed me.

Plus, all of the home remedies that I have been applying made it so I wasn't in excruciating pain upon arrival.

I think if the whole side of my face was swollen and I was in misery, one of their staff might have stayed an extra half hour, in order to maybe drain the abscess and/or write me a prescription for antibiotics; in kind of a Good Samaritan spirit.

I certainly wasn't getting the same "f*** off and die!" vibe that David Greenwell (as that is the name of the other resident) was trying to portray.

But again, that is probably based more upon the way the world treats him, and not necessarily me. For: "Our attitude towards life determines life's attitude towards us," a mentor of mine once said..