Let me get this straight, the dopey Slaughter woman is giving this sob story about a constituent who, because her health insurance wouldn’t cover the cost of dentures, had to wear her dead sister’s teeth?
Thanks to all you posted funny pics, btw, I’m laffing and spitting at them all.
So here’s a story....TRUE.
My husband oncit upon a time had very bad teeth. Very bad.
Now he had a way of “hiding” his bad teeth but for reasons he could not fathom, his teeth started going rotten sometime in his 20’s. He had massive dental work on them, once as a teenager and once again in early 30’s.
He could, through practice, kinds hide his very, very bad teeth by smiling a certain way...that sort of thing.
I knew he had bad teeth. I was puzzled but they never hurt him and he tended to them meticulously...odd.
Over the years I kinda forgot about it save for an occasion when he’d smile and I’d get a glimpse of those bad teeth.
I don’t know why he didn’t go to a dentist, get the damn things pulled. He said everytime he went to a dentist, they kept trying to “save” the teeth. He was in misery so he figured if they don’t hurt he’s moving on.
This is a true story...a good one.
Besides, as with most of us never mind that dopey Slaughter woman, our health care plans do NOT cover dental work unless there’s some medical connection. Almost always, if that be the case, you gotta fight for any coverage.
So husband, in Sept. 2008 gets pneumonia. Bad. He goes to hospital, they take care, then they release him. You’ll have some pain and fever but keeping take the med and you’ll get betteer...they told him.
Only he didn’t. His right arm went numb. Then he began having seizures. They found some sort of black gunk in his lungs and after an MRI, they discovered that he had FIVE HUGE puss filled lesions IN HIS BRAIN!
He almost died. It was a long recovery, beginning with a seizure that lasted so long they finally had to put him a coma. Intensive care, hospital, eventually to a rehabilitation to learn how to walk and talk all over again.
It was a year long horror show.
So Infectious Disease doc tells us that husband had some kind of fungus thing, that they kept testing and testing, but they never could figure out what it was. After months of intravenous antibiotic...six times a day, middle of night, through a PICC line....finally they pronounce his body rid of the horror that was eating him alive.
“We think it got into your brain through your teeth,” ID doc says.
We were both shocked. ID doc wrote a letter to our health insurance insisting that husband would not be declared healed until an oral surgeon went into that jaw and removed all those rotten teeth AND chisle away that rotten jaw bone, which too was black.
The health insurance DID, with no argument, pay for husband’s oral surgeon. Husband had to have very special care due to his brain infection. They knew his jaw bone holding his teeth was black, they knew he had a brain infection, they knew that his pneumonia had somehow unleashed something, something maybe living a happy life in his mouth bone, living on the calcium in his teeth, into his blood stream.
It cost almost twenty grand to get that operation and all of husband’s teeth removed. Oral surgeon told us that his mouth bone, whatever it’s called, was rotten to the core.
After all was said and done....common agreement is, amongst all the docs, that husband had some kind of some living thing in his teeth, mouth bone, that it was alive and sucking out his calcium...no one ever quite figured out what it was.
Poor husband struggled his life to fix his teeth but something was living on them.
Now in this case health insurance paid for the oral surgery, no arguments at all. Like I said, it cost a pretty penny.
Only...THEY DIDN’T PAY FOR HIS DENTURES!!
We had to pay for dentures ourselves.
Understand I was only too happy to pay for them but point being...the Dems would paint the health insurer, already out over a hundred grand for care of husband and let’s not forget my own quadruple bypass just a year prior (yeah, 2008 was a great year) and now we’re talking about three hundred grand...but hey, the Dems would tell the story about how poor husband had to pay for his own dentures!
Husband looks like a million bucks with his new teeth, btw.
Neither will Universal Health Care. Dental care is not in their bill.
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What an ordeal. TG your hub now has fine teeth.
I have heard of several folks who died from a tooth/jaw infection that goes straight to the brain.
If anything, this should be a reminder to everyone to get that twice yearly dental checkup from a competent dentist.
Many Universities with dental schools give free or reduced price exams and cleanings to all, esp. senior citizens.
Slaughter’s anecdote may not have told the whole story. We don’t know all the circumstances. Is it possible that the wearer of the teeth has some mental issues that led her to use her dead sister’s teeth in the first place? Could it be that she is unaware that many outlets for affordable dentures exist? I live in a rural area, and one of these denture places is a short drive away. They cater to elderly people who need their services. What’s bothersome is Slaughter’s implication that ONLY if this bill is passed, this type of thing will not happen in America anymore.
All I know is that if I were so destitute that I couldn’t afford dentures, I’d put away my dead sister’s set and suggest that family members give me money for birthdays if they insisted on giving a gift. if I had to. I’d save until I had at least a down payment for a set. There are many ways around things.
WOW. What a story.
My own father died from menengitis that he contracted via an infection in his teeth. Tooth infections got into bloodstream and can go to the brain or spinal column.
Yes, its true. Take care of your teeth if you want a long life.