In America, There Are No Dental Emergencies on Wednesdays
Letter from a day in the life of a working class American
I have been the victim of dental malpractice twice, and since I’m now 65 I guess that means I’ve been lucky. Anyway, some of the longterm consequences of those earlier malpractices manifested themselves this morning in the form of pain at approximately this level:
Mierda! and far worse(I am a Navy veteran) ran through my mind as I tried to complete a call at my call center job without screaming. This was one of those times when even a Zen master would forgive a tear rolling down a cheek, which happened. Fortunately, today was a work from home day, so I didn’t have to drive anywhere after I expended some sick time for the afternoon off.
All right, my crappy dental insurance will pay maybe 20% of an extraction or two(right now false teeth do not exist in my financial reality, so forgeddabouddit), but I came out of Chapter 13 bankruptcy a couple of years ago and paid off the crooked car loan, so now I have a credit limit that will pay for whatever it costs now, end the pain, and I can figure out how to deal with paying that off later.
So my wife and I do the Dubya thing and use the Google to find nearby “emergency dental services.” There are several dentists nearby as well as a dental clinic. We called them.
They are all closed on Wednesdays, even the emergency clinic. Crap. That’s right. It’s been that way for decades. Sometimes, life in the heart of the Empire just plain sucks.
And ow!
All right. My wife and I are both working class Americans, so on to Plan B. You gotta have a Plan B or you go crazy. And here it comes now, my wonderful wife with a bottle of Bombay Blue Sapphire and another of dry Italian vermouth, plus olives.
All those James Bond marathons I watched back in the day taught me something useful, after all. Wish me luck with a dentist of unknown skills tomorrow.
And if you want to, and only if it is within your financially comfortable capacity to do so, help me pay whatever outrageously Only In America bill I am about to receive, please consider a paid subscription to my Substack for a month or two. After that, if you don’t want to continue, that’s on me.
Thank you all and have a great holiday if you are able to participate in such things. I am all too aware there are so many who cannot.
Hoping this works out somehow.
It's repugnant that it is this way but it's one of the pillars of slavery keeping us all in the mines. Prison rape, homelessness, and dental torture. That is the American whip that keeps us all doing why our kings demand. Western civ is just Victorian England rebranded and less honest. Edit: I use flowable cement to keep my teeth functional. They terrify me daily.