One of my back teeth is aching at the moment

As a toothless and broke person this got me good. Been a while since I've been this personally attacked.
- My condolences. hug.gif
- Don’t forget it was hard for them too
- We out here g. Every other week it's a roll of the dice on if a filling or crown will chip or crack. If only implants didn't cost baseline $60k I'd fuck right off from the dentist bills and go full robo jaw.

If you can't find a cheap or available option try contacting a local college of dentistry. Honestly, they're always advertising free or low cost dental care here.
- Yes and please make sure you get it checked out! It may seem like a non-issue (just minor pain, etc) but if it ever gets worse the damage is likely going to become permanent and your quality of life with no teeth/extreme toothache is a lot lower than you might think.
  Source: my dad and uncle neglected their teeth and its becoming a bad issue now
  
  Not even that, your teeth are linked in with your vascular and nervous systems. It may seem like a none issue now but it could lead to neurological issues or sepsis.
  
  Not to mention the other problems it can cause.
  Ten years ago when I was even more broke than now and didn't have any affordable options, I would put off going to the dentist if at all possible.
  This lead to two tooth abscesses that spawned a third one in my throat. I was in the hospital for two weeks, one of which I spent in the ICU on a respirator since the growing abscess was pushing on my trachea.
  If not for the near-universal single payer healthcare here in Denmark, I would probably either gone to the hospital too late and died or been in crushing debt for that hospital visit for the rest of my life even if I lived to be 100 years old.
  Then again, if not for someone's idiotic idea of not including dentistry when they set up the single payer system way back in the 60s or 70s, I would have been able to afford taking much better care of my teeth and never would have been in that situation to begin with.
  
  Thanks, you’re totally right as my grandpa neglected his and had false teeth. One of the reasons I’m such an ardent brusher, I’m hoping this case is something simple.
  
  Yeah do what this person’s saying, I watched someone I know disregard their own teeth and saw their teeth actually rot out of their head. It is no fucking good.
  
  Where they get all that teeth money from? Sounds like American dentist talk
- Thanks, I’ll look around. Better than waiting.
  
  For cleaninga - Dental hygienist schools always I mean ALWAYS need patients. They have to find them to graduate..
  For cavities/ pain - Some local community health departments have low cost / sliding scale dental health care. Call your local health department
  Source - wife is a dental hygienist and worked in public health
- This. They just need you for a follow-up visits, since they get graded on how mow complete the procedure was done.
  Unfortunately, dental works are of those kinds where everything takes multiple sittings.

I'm currently living through my most stessful week of my life: About a year and a half ago, I bought a plot of land with the project of building a home there, inflation and loan rate kicked in, so I thought "alright let's wait a bit see when it stabilizes", this week I learned my plot is planned to be removed from the "buildable" area. If I don't put a building permit to the city council before this is voted my land will basically see it's value divided by 20 and I won't be able to build a house there, I put 6 years of savings into this project.. all because my gov decided that they didn't want this area to be urbanised anymore.
I have trouble sleeping and working I can't think of anything else, I also lost my appetite.
- Oh no!
  I’m guessing plopping a manufactured (mobile) or tiny home (shed) there wouldn’t tide you over…(?)
  Good luck 🤞
  
  Thank you for the kind message. We are looking into these alternative options, they come with their own set of laws and stuff, we don't really know yet what we can do.
- Actual nightmare situation
- This is happening to my father as well, although the city is doing the opposite: he can't build a house on his property, he has to build a minimum of 40 apartments (it's a 1/2 acre lot).

Canada just released its timetable to phase routine maintenance dental care into a consolidated health plan.
It's starting small, but if our Republican wanna-bes don't kill it we could have universal coverage and equal access to dental care regardless of economic station.
- Everyone deserves free healthcare and dental, I pray you get to see that dream.
  
  The provincial conservatives where I live are trying their best to destroy that universal healthcare. It's rather infuriating.
- It's crazy that teeth and eyes are separate from the rest of healthcare.
  
  And ears. And prescription drugs (Medicare).

This might sound scary, but try holding ice cold water in your mouth. I had an infected tooth and that made it feel SOOOO much better until I could get it fixed.
May or may not help your situation, but if it hurts as bad as mine did, you're probably willing to try anything.
- At this point, I’ll give anything free a shot lol.
- Can confirm this works
- I had an abscess under a tooth many years ago, and the only thing that helped the pain was to chew ice and pack the resulting slush in between the gums and cheek where that tooth was.
  It wouldn’t do anything for a minute, then suddenly the pain would just turn off. It was great.
- This only works if the source of the pain is an infection. If the pain is from an exposed nerve this will be torture.

This. I've only been recently able to afford much needed dental care, and now it's too late for one of my teeth, a tooth above it broke the roots because my mouth is too crowded. Had I been able to afford it earlier, I would have a much more normal mouth.
- I have larger than average teeth too, so I had braces all of middle school.
  Hoping the cause of this is something simple like a sinus infection, though the area has a baby tooth that’s managed to hang on and it has fillings from when I was a kid.
  
  My problem is the opposite, normal teeth, small mouth! Haven't ever been able to have braces until now, so I'm knocking it all out now. Hope everything goes well for you!
- Aye, the least you can do is contain the damage...
  
  Yep, I'm grateful that I can fix what's still there, it's just unfortunate that teeth are luxury bones, and good health is a luxury in and of itself.

I'm in the middle of getting a crown down, two more weeks til I get the crown put on. I have an implant from a while ago. The implant hurt more.

I chipped my back teeth on something, but it ain't hurting so i am making an effort to not worry about it. Not like i even want to live to see my body breaking down in old age anyway.
- How bad is the tooth? Percentage wise of it’s size, I think anything near a 1/4 of it is pretty bad. 🤞

Some bad tooth advice: try to floss with a water pick if you can, do it softly, after you brush your teeth. Follow by rinsing with 1 part hydrogen peroxide and 9 parts warm water—DO NOT swallow the hydrogen peroxide mixture, and definitely please make sure to dilute adequately with water. Are you in any state that has Medicaid? I think I remember it having a dental component. In lieu of that, a lot of dental schools offer free services. Good luck!!

If you have a cavity that you can't afford to deal with go get some clove oil ( yes, I know how people feel about essential oils and I usually agree- but this is legit) and cotton swabs. Soak the swab in the oil to excess and then put the swab in the cavity and squeeze the excess oil into the cavity. This is going to taste like you ate a thousand pounds of cinnamon and your mouth might water- a lot, but clove oil is a dentist approved antiseptic. You have to be careful, it can burn your face skin if you get it anywhere unintended.
I have been slowly losing my teeth over the past decade and am too broke to fix it, so I had to rely on clove oil between being able to afford extractions. It helped a lot. If the oil doesn't work then the infection is too far gone and you need good antibiotics. They wouldn't even be able to extract a tooth that bad.
- Go to dental schools, way cheaper, have payment plans and insurance companies usually comp it fully.
  
  And rarely available, and far away for most people. Getting in to a dental school for complicated work is like winning the lottery.

Rethorical question: Where in the world your insurance doesn't cover this?
And: Buying a house .. I don't know what to say about this. Who would do such a thing?
- It is not uncommon for people to travel from California or Las Vegas to Mexico for dental work because the expense is so high, sometimes even with insurance.
  
  I do live in SoCal, so it’s not a crazy idea... Really hoping it won’t come to a potentially expensive surgery or Mexico though.
- Aus here, for complex dental I can claim up to $800 annually on my extras cover, need braces for around $8000.
  Edit: forgot to mention it'd only have been ~$2000 around 2003 when I was first told I needed them, but my parents, whom paid off our house with a year's combined salary, couldn't afford it. My dad argued it should come out of his existing child support payment, and I didn't get them.
- Before this week, Canada.
  In Canada eyes and teeth are not considered "health" and thus is also not covered by universal healthcare.
  It was up to the provinces and employers to implement whatever coverage they wanted for those. In my place, dental care is free if you are under 18, or if you live from government assistance. The only way to get healthcare for your teeth as an adult, is to have a dental plan at work. So a young adult working minimum wage in a convenience store doesn't have dental insurance.
  From personal experience, I didn't have dental insurance between 18 and 30 because I had low wage jobs.
  However this is going to change a bit soon, because the social-democrats just pushed a vote to expand dental insurance to everyone that needs it. It's not universal yet but now people with low wage jobs will be covered.
- FWIW, our universal health coverage here will cover medical dental care, but not cosmetic. They'll patch up or remove your bad tooth, but I think it'd be harder to get an implant or a crown without paying for it. Weirdly, dentists are still one of the two or three basic services where people here are still willing to pay for uncovered medical attention, the others being eyecare and pediatrics.
  When I needed surgery my private dentist still sent me over to the public system, though. Took a look at my X-rays, told me she wasn't gonna touch any of that without an MRI and an OR on standby and told me to go to my public doctor with a note and tell them to get me booked with a maxillofacial surgeon, which I did. It wasn't that big of a deal in the end, but the reaction was... revealing.
- I get where you're coming from, but you're not making the point you think you're making - even on the NHS you'd probably have to go private for that, unless you're on benefits in which case the NHS dentist has to see you, but will make you wait months and months for an appointment with their one burnt out NHS dentist who will do their best within their limits because they're only allowed to do the bare minimum on NHS patients (edit just to clarify: this isn't how it always was, and not "intentional" that people can't see an NHS dentist, there just aren't any, a result of dire underfunding and basically privatisation).
  Yes, social healthcare is amazing and worth fighting for, but social healthcare under capitalism will still always favour profit over people, and the results are clear to see, which is why the only viable long term solution is to abolish capitalism, not fight for the stale crumbs it's willing to give.
  
  Yes, I hate it. Even here in Germany you have to pay extra if you do not want the "repairs" done in a way that your teeth look normal again. But at least, bad teeth are considered a health issue here and you get treated when you have problems with your teeth and don't have to wait too long if it is a kind of emergency.
- The USA
- Dental insurance in the US is absolute garbage that barely covers anything really.
  
  insurance isn't SUPPOSED to cover regular expenses. YOur car insurance doesn't pay when you take your car to the shop for maintenance. If you want that you'll need to find someone willing to sell you a dental warranty. Reach out to carshield, they aren't doing great at getting me to buy an extended warranty on my car, maybe you'll convience them to expand their business model. ;-)
- Dental is tricky in many countries. It's delicate, easy to go wrong and very often painful. In Poland I used to do simple things like fillings using public insurance and I've heard many times that I'm crazy and for sure they will fuck it up. I think it's simply because it's it expensive and will go wrong people will think it was inevitable. But if it's free and goes wrong people will say it's because it was free. So in my experience even if public insurance covers dental people tend to avoid it.
- In America, dental and health insurance are separate. And many jobs that provide health insurance can often not provide dental insurance. There is a reason teeth are referred to as the "luxury bones".
  
  Dem bones dem bones, dem luxury bones

clove oil, babes. you can buy cloves and coconut oil at the dollar store. dump em both into a pot, simmer on low for a few hours. strain and pop into a container. it'll solidify, so you can just swipe a chunk and tip it across your gums and into any applicable holes. not as good as the distilled stuff, but it's kinda hard to make that yourself without the proper equipment.

And interest rates were a lot higher back then. No one had it "easy"

my parents didn't have teeth by the time they were in their 30s either. Americans have a rather out-of-proportion concern about their teeth. I know its a trope that Englishman have bad teeth, but look, dental isn't covered by British universal health care because most times its primarily cosmetic , even things American dentists say are essential, and not a true health concern.
- Teeth are absolutely not cosmetic. Infection of a tooth can lead to dangerous consequences up to sepsis. Your parents didn't have teeth because they had them removed by a dentist to avoid abscesses.
  Guys, please don't underestimate dental health
- Go ahead and live with dentures then. When your bottoms pop out every time you eat steak, remember what you said here. Teeth are absolutely essential. It’s cheaper to take care of your natural teeth than it is to drop 30k on implant-supported dentures, or if you’re broke, just basic ones.
  Source: I work in the field. Bottom dentures are by far the most disappointing service we do.
- lol at the thought of “this part of your body that you use multiple times every day for vital survival functions and various other functions like communication is mostly cosmetic, you’ll do just fine without!”
  Teeth bleaching is cosmetic, crowns and fillings and whatever are restoration of normal functioning.
  If we were meant to be ok without properly functioning teeth, we wouldn’t have teeth in the first place. That’s a stupid argument biologically speaking. (No offense intended to you personally, ofc)
  I understand that Americans have a disproportionate focus on the -specifically cosmetic- aspects of oral hygiene, whiteness and straightness, primarily, but to say that most oral care is unnecessary and purely cosmetic is just absolute hogwash.
  Mind you this is from someone who intends to get all her teeth ripped out and replaced with implants because no matter what I do, I average a cavity every 2-4 years. It’s cheaper in the long run to get implanted dentures than to fight my genes. So I understand entirely the being toothless by 30 (tho I’m 36 and still have all of them, I think I have more fillings than teeth at this point, and if most of those weren’t done free in the military I’d just have no teeth) but I disagree vehemently with the idea that that’s totally fine and won’t cause problems.
  
  oh it's fine, you know how when deer get old and their teeth are all worn away or whatever, and they can't eat anymore and they just starve to death... it's just part of life! /s