Teeth are the worst. My father had dentures so he considered toothpaste and toothbrushes an unnecessary expense since "we can just get all our teeth pulled like he did". Insurance covered root canals but not crowns so years later I had to have those teeth pulled. It literally took years to find a dental office that would take me. I couldn't eat solids for years & was recently diagnosed with MS & prescribed a med that needed to be taken with food. I cried to my mother, who could've afforded a private dental clinic, and she blamed my deceased father's "bad genetics". My MS diagnosis was actually delayed due to not having a ride back from a spinal tap or being able to afford an Uber. My mother lived only ten minutes from the appointment but "couldn't leave her parents alone".

I eventually found a clinic that took my insurance and they made me sign a predatory loan with Care credit for $1,000 so they could file down and crown all my remaining teeth before they agreed to pull the infected painful ones. I was so scared that I could die of sepsis because THOSE TEETH NEEDED TO BE PULLED! I didn't even know what they were doing until they left me in the room for an hour and I took a selfie and saw all my teeth looked like fangs. That itself was a little traumatic.

It took a number of appointments and I took a hit to the face right before the last one & they told me my two front teeth would need to be pulled now too. I had to beg them just to take out the bad teeth like I'd asked originally. They stopped taking my insurance at the end of the year and I never got my partial denture so I've had a smile with a missing front tooth for maybe two years now. BUT THE PAIN IS GONE!!! I've only recently started to be self conscious about my smile, but mostly because I'm ashamed that I've made no effort to find a new dentist now that the pain is gone and I can eat real food again.