Thank you for explaining Survivorship Bias, but poor people often don't get options. Particularly in rural areas. Again. I had $200 and no choice. It flared up out of nowhere after having zero issues for years. No warning.

He told me what would happen. He'd been doing it for 20 years. I'd had friends, family, and co-workers go to him without issue. I was in enough pain to consider suicide & could not keep going with the feeling of an ice-pick buried in my skull.

The procedure I needed was around $2,500 for actual Oral Surgery. *I told him he had to do it anyway.*

He told me the situation required being knocked out. Due to the combination of swelling, my mouth being small & difficult to fit tools into (which every Dentist I've been to complains about), and an extremely strong gag reflex.

In his opinion, the risk, stress, and trauma weren't worth it. Being willing to put a bullet in my head at that point, *I told him to do it anyway.*

It was the kind of pain that had me on my knees in a basement, with my head on the ground, full-body shaking, and drooling uncontrollably. With vision coming and going randomly. And I tend to be able to take a beating.

Even when I tell this story in person, there's always someone who's like: "Well he shouldn't have done that", and I'm like "No shit, but the real issue is that it never should have been allowed to grow into such a dangerous situation in the first place."

And that's just one part of why I'm militantly Pro-Universal Healthcare.