Gary seems to be having some luck from the Instalanche. (Who are uniformly apologizing for being rightwingers, but donating. It's very cute.)
There may be a dental college nearby that could fix his teeth for nearly free, which might be worth looking into once this immediate crisis has passed.
Reynolds isn't all bad, and neither are his readers. Just mystifyingly wrong about all sorts of stuff.
I did the dental school route when I was a kid, since it's all we could afford. The bad work they did led to no less than 5 root canals later in my life. Nightmare.
I didn't say I was surprised, just that I thought it was cute. "hey, um, sorry I'm a rightwing evangelical, but here's $50."
3: My fiance's stepdad had better luck when he went to a dental school. In any case, if the option is between no dental care (because from what Gary's describing, we're talking a few thousand dollars here) and dental school care, the latter is probably a better option.
I missed many days in 8th grade due to the need to finish dental-school work. 13 years old! Healthy teeth! Never needed braces! I didn't mind then, except for being numbed a lot, but I mind it now. My mother believes that during the same period up to 4 of her teeth were unnecessarily removed.
Incidentally (ha, ha) does anyone know what the rationale is for treating dental health separate from overall physical health? You need separate insurance coverage for dental, and in Canada, while health coverage is universal, dental is not covered at all (except emergency dental).
No other aspect of health is treated as separate in this way.
I don't know whether this is a common area of irrational paranoia based on all the awful things people say about dental work, or if it's just me being weird, but I've always had a vague suspicion (which I don't in fact actually believe in) that some dentists deliberately damage patients' teeth so as to create more work for themselves. I've never thought anything similar about, say, doctors.
No idea. One of Gary's commenters rather rudely suggested that he 'get a job with dental coverage', perhaps not realizing that even a good job with a dental plan probably maxes at $1500 a year.
If Gary's blog allowed comments from non-blogger registrants, I'd tell him there: feel better.
8: I think the justification is that so much dental expense is regular maintenance. A healthy person probably doesn't need any significant medical treatment from one year to the next, but even someone with good teeth needs a couple of cleanings, X-rays, and maybe a filling every year.
I went for a normal cleaning this summer, and I swear the dental hygienist was angry with me for not having cavities. I hadn't been to the dentist in over three years, and she clucked and tsk-tsked her disapproval, but seemed disappointed when the Gods of Dentition hadn't smote me for my heretical cleaning schedule. (Seriously, $75 just for a cleaning? Lunacy.)
9: One of your more endearing black-helicopter hunches, LB. I don't know why I find it cute—you're probably terrified when you go to the dentist.
I know that this is going to taint my charisma, but I just had 8 of my 9 remaining upper teeth (and semi-teeth) pulled. I only wear the plate now on formal occasions and for photo-ops.
I should have done it 10 years ago (and I did think about it then.) In between times, probably $15,000 was spent on the sons of bitches, a third out of my own pocket. Your teeth can be your worst enemies.
Some people have perfect teeth without taking care of them. They may need occasional cleaning, but they don't decay.
I thought I had teeth like that, and then I had kids. While I've read in several places that the association of tooth decay and pregnancy was a myth, my first check-up after Sally was born showed a bunch of cavities.
Dang, John. Do you hang the whole plate off the one tooth, or do you have to use denture adhesive? (My dad had a partial plate from college on--it used to fascinate me as a child.)
No other aspect of health is treated as separate in this way.
Mental health care is usually broken out separately, too, usually with much worse benefits than comparable physical issues. (I used to work at a mental health care HMO.)
No other aspect of health is treated as separate in this way.
Not entirely true. In the U.S. for a long time mental health was not covered by most insurance. Hell, my high-deductible self-insured employer-based coverage still doesn't cover it.
Even though great strides have been made in this area, and mental health is often, unlike dental coverage, included in the regular health coverage, the management of those benefits is often farmed out to separate behavioral health companies.
17: I thought it had been confirmed that pregnancy leeched calcium from the mother's skeleton to the baby, and that's what causes the teeth problems.
I have read that that's a myth. Of course, I also have a whole bunch of postnatal fillings.
Having healthy teeth is one one of the unspoken class markers in the U.S. I was always so jealous of people I knew who had perfect teeth. It burned me up that most of those people were from families that had the money to get the right dental care when they were younger.
There's all kinds of work, some necessary and some cosmetic, that I want to have done as soon as I come into a bit of money. Which should be any day now, actually.
(White Noise is being optioned for an Off-Broadway run, and we're optioning the film rights as well. Woo hoo.)
(White Noise is being optioned for an Off-Broadway run, and we're optioning the film rights as well. Woo hoo.)
Excelleint - congratulations!
Congrats, Joe; very cool. (I should also say that despite sitting right next to you at the first NY meetup, and despite wanting to find something wrong with you after you corrected my pronunciation of your name, I didn't notice anything wonky about your teeth.)
That's because you were staring at my ass.
25: How did you mispronounce "Joe"? The "e" is silent, Ogged.
Yay, Joe! Congratulations. I really enjoyed White Noise and am glad to hear more people are going to have a chance to see it.
Thanks, guys! It should open early next year, like February-ish. We're looking at the Jane Street Theater, which is where Hedwig played.
23- so true. My parents even coughed up for braces, but could only (and barely) afford the cheapest possible place in town, and like so many other things, in dental care you usually get what you pay for. So even though I wore braces for several years, and spend a lot of time with my mouth in pain, and even to this day have to wear a retainer at night (or risk having my teeth undergo rapid significant shift, presumably for the worse, a risk that I would think were overblown if my retainer weren't so-tight-I-can-barely-get-it-on if I skip wearing it for even a few consecutive days), my teeth aren't at all straight, and most people express surprise on learning that I wore braces. (One acquaintance put it delicately: "your teeth aren't how I usually imagine teeth looking once they've come out of braces".)
Oh, and congratulations on the fame and fortune.
"If Gary's blog allowed comments from non-blogger registrants, I'd tell him there: feel better."
Well, I just read this, and the rest. (Haven't even read my own comment threads yet; haven't been reading blogs at all the last couple of days; still too spacy/ick/illish to up for doing much yet.)
But, thanks, all! (Indidividuals thank yous to indidividual donators will go out in a day or two, when I'm up to it.)
The funny thing (in my mind) about these donation drives is that the actual rate of donations/hits is, depending on your POV.
You can see pretty clearly here (for the next couple of days) where the increased hits from the links to the teeth post came in, and the difference; just about every one of those his goes to that post, and only very few look at any other posts.
So while's a very crude approximation, that's about 6000+ people, out of which I've gotten -- I haven't counted up yet, but maybe 28-32 donations, mostly in the $10-25 range, though a handful have been higher, including two $100 ones.
So like anyone doing mass appeals will tell ya, ... uh, well, they'd tell a something someone not so spacey feeling as I feel just now would say. So ta for now. (And, yeah, I figure that whatever needs to be done will cost thousands; the nutshell version is that I've had no dental treatment in about 30 years, and was never very great about my own care, anyway; so several teeth are effectively completely gone, and a couple more are partially, and that's just what's visible; I'm figuring I may learn the joy of complete dentures soon; assuming I can afford them, and don't just get air to whistle through. Bleah.)
And my teeth really weren't that bad to start.
There you are, DeLillo, you dirty bastard.
Thought that was our Joe D's work.
30: Woohoo! I get a second chance after not having been able to make it the first time!
Congratulations, Joe!
And hope you feel better soon, Gary. I can't contribute this time, but will when I have some money to spare.
25: How did you mispronounce "Joe"? The "e" is silent, Ogged.
I think he forgot to pronounce the "J" in the Spanish way.
Congratulations Joe! I really regret having missed it the first time around.