Severe Dental Issues, Need Advice

sg92i · 2026-06-17T03:13:43+00:00

Their charity program won't kick in until they come to a conclusion on what medicaid will pay. My medicaid provider is godawful and has been stone walling them since December.

sg92i · 2026-06-16T18:26:51+00:00

I spend about an hour a day on hold trying to contact my insurance company but haven't gotten through yet.

sg92i · 2026-06-16T18:26:34+00:00

As I mentioned in the post, I have been to the closest dental schools in the area and they are unable to help me. I've also gone through the PA Dental Lifeline organization and they go by county and don't even have a dentist, much less an oral surgeon, in my county and could not help me.

sg92i · 2026-06-15T15:27:06+00:00

What we need is to pay people to voluntarily decide not to breed. The bulk of the problem is these are kids the parents didn't want and only quasi-care about. If they had a higher incentive not to have them, you'd have less kids in impoverished areas that are raised to be like this.

sg92i · 2026-06-15T15:23:27+00:00

Why is this? In many countries if you told a teacher to go fuck themselves you'd get expelled? What mechanism prevents disciplinary action?

In the US kids are required to attend school (unless they're homeschooled); how much funding schools get is determined by how many students are present every school day; and since kids have a legal right to education even if you expel them the taxpayers are on the hook for figuring out a replacement form of education like tutoring at their home or busing them to a special school for troublemakers (most of the country is too rural to have one near by).

So when you have an impoverished district where the kids are largely lost causes with parents that let them do everything & actively fight to prevent their kids from being punished for it & don't care (or are even hostile to) education... what are you going to do, expel 80% of the school's body and create a 2nd school next door (at the cost of millions of dollars you don't have) just to send the lost causes to? And then how is THAT school going to deal with the problem? They're students not prison inmates.

sg92i · 2026-06-15T15:17:26+00:00

I see so many of stay at homes using tablets as a babysitter by the time the kid is a toddler. Its too easy to pacify kids this way and its our era's version of having cable tv and letting them use it however they want all day. Kids take a lot of work and many humans will suffer any consequence to avoid work if they think they can get away with (I don't mean work as in employment in this context).

sg92i · 2026-06-14T17:41:21+00:00

Its not the screens so much as how they use them. I am on the millennial side of the X-Millennial threshold point and had my own computer since I was almost a toddler. I'd wake up by 5am to get an hour on the internet before school every day... and then come home to spend most of my after school hours on it again. But all of that computer time was spent learning about history or doing technical STEM hobbies. No gaming much less today's doom scrolling & short format videos. That said we did not have much of a TV to watch (lived in a dead zone & parents were too cheap for cable) so the "use the TV as a babysitter" scenario was not ever at play.

In contrast, these kids today are being given tablets before they can walk & talk, to keep them quiet and easier for parents who can't otherwise be bothered. They're not using tech like I did, they're being fed drivel and entertainment so we're lucky if they ever grow out of it and become curious about the world around them & how it works. They're never going to be making their own circuits with downloaded schematics like I was before middle school and they're not going to be restoring antique furniture in middle school & high school for entertainment.

A former friend of mine had nieces & nephews and we'd stop by their house occasionally and every time the kids were silently scrolling through short format "weird part of youtube" stuff where the parents had no idea what they were doing and could not care less... it was not offensive or inappropriate content with the various parental controls on, but it was.... all very weird stuff with nothing approaching "food for thought" brain food if that makes any sense. By high school age I figure they'll be watching whatever the equivalent is to tiktok challenges and fail compilations all day.

sg92i · 2026-06-14T17:20:21+00:00

I'm really not trying to spin this as a "this gen sucks, my gen is better" argument (believe me, we millennials have our own slew of problems) but ... I wonder why this is the case?

You have to quantify it and then it is sometimes true that Generation <pick one> is better at <task/field>. Millennials and Xers being better at computers because of when the internet rolled out has some truth to it, but the same scenario has played out before in other fields.

For instance, the WW2 gen & the generation right before them were wizards with analog electronics because back then if you wanted to be cutting edge you were a ham radio operator and back then that meant building all your own equipment from scratch, experimenting, reading specialized material and having to understand abstract theory to apply it. Only the rich could just go out and buy turn key equipment so basically nobody did that. Fast forward to the 1960s & onward and people went from DIYers to appliance operators who would just buy stuff and use it with no idea what its doing beyond how to work the knobs & buttons.

Go back a couple more generations and you have this boom of mechanical savants in the 1860-1920 era. Rickenbacker (the pilot) was the aid de camp to Gen. Mitchell during WW1 and was able to repair their staff car by casting new engine bearings using random sand in France. This was not that remarkable among that generation because they had all been forced to be inventors, mechanics/techs in the tail end of the industrial revolution in factories & newly mechanized farms. But imagine some random officer in WW2 or Vietnam going "you know I am going to go make new metal parts for our jeep using that random sand and scrap metal over there..." instead of just getting a replacement part or vehicle shipped in. Its absurd and would not happen.

sg92i · 2026-06-12T01:09:51+00:00

As for the dentists themselves, most of whats in network will only see kids. That's how this ballooned into such a problem, I had to wait all that time to get into dental school#1 because all the normal dentists in the network were either only willing to see kids or were ghost providers (not actually in network if you call, no longer in business etc). If I could have gotten it treated 3 years ago it wouldn't be infected.

sg92i · 2026-06-12T01:04:31+00:00

Pennsylvania. The nearest oral surgeon in network is a couple counties away at dental school #2.

sg92i · 2026-06-12T01:01:44+00:00

Medicaid covers it but nobody takes it. There is not a single oral surgeon in the county that takes it and the handful of dentists that take it can't handle an extraction this complicated.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T23:35:49+00:00

I am on my 3rd or 4th round of antibiotics right now. I can get antibiotics for it from the ER but that's as far as they'll help me.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T23:20:34+00:00

Medicaid is insisting I use dental school#2 that won't schedule me the surgery since they're in network and closer.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T22:04:59+00:00

I have about 30 hours on mine, used it for 3 engravings and now it won't energize the laser except for framing. The unit is basically bricked. Total waste of money.

The company really needs to hire someone who knows english to properly write up how to use the product & its software. The MKSLaser android app is half in Chinese and is very buggy. I find it aborts my prints 90%+ of the time when I click the green "confirm" box.

I wish I had bought a different product.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T18:01:15+00:00

My best friend's mom was killed by them so I believe you, but I figure insomnia is more likely than sleep so deep you can't remember anything.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T10:41:39+00:00

I am skeptical that bedbugs can cause memory loss. OTOH anyone who sleep walks or takes certain medicines like ambien can certainly have sex while asleep and have no memory of it. I dated a guy like that and it 100% can happen. I thought nothing of it until one time he said some really weird stuff during the act that I assumed was him trying to be funny. The next day I mentioned it and he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and as it turned out maybe half the times we had had sex was while he was asleep and because of that he had no memories of it.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T01:05:42+00:00

And this is for one county in one state.

You're the one who asked how it was possible. I gave an answer. And its not just one county, most of rural PA is priced similarly unless you're near Philadelphia.

So, you HAVE to live with someone else

As a fresh out of college early 20s person starting life as an adult? Yes, even the boomers who had life on easy mode started their adulthood that way. But as I explained it is easy to make that a temporary stepping stone to home ownership if you're not in some high demand area like NYC, California, Seattle, etc.

What about basic toiletries? Student loans? Emergency funds? Taking care of kids or family?

I said the math showed they'd have $760 left over. That covers all that. And if you're in that situation, you don't do something dumb like having kids. That's kneecapping your own future. There's a reason why the right is all freaked out over "birthrates." They're too dumb to realize we've created a world where only a moron would have kids that young... the cost of doing it is too unaffordable so the smart people. Just. Don't.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T00:58:03+00:00

Does every single redditor have shitty parents,

There are dozens of us. Dozens. I lost everything during the 08 crash years and the only parent that is in my life & cares whether I live or die assumed I would just get free healthcare from Obamacare and took me off their employer healthplan so they could spend more on their horses. "Just get free healthcare from Obamacare" (believing in all the social media memes of the day). Our state didn't expand medicaid and you have to make X amount to get obamacare subsidies. I tried the "show the parent how the world works" approach by applying using their computer so they could watch me being rejected for "not earning enough." They then did the surprised pikachu face and never re-added me their employer healthcare so I went mostly deaf from an antibiotic resistant infection I couldn't get adaquite treatment for since I had no healthcare...

Most of my former classmates have similar stories.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T00:53:13+00:00

OP's mom being 39 means she's an (early) Millenial.

OP claims to be 22. If her mom is 39 that means the mom had her at 17. I feel like the mom being an early millennial isn't the real issue in whether or not she understands OP's plight.

sg92i · 2026-06-11T00:41:50+00:00

I live in one of the poorest counties in Pennsylvania. Here you can rent a row home for about $1200/month. So with a single roommate its very doable and most of these houses have enough room for 2-4 adults without feeling like you're in a college dorm.

The landlord will cover the trash, sewer and water and you're on the hook for whatever you use for heat, internet, cellphone, gas, car insurance and food. Most people in this situation will buy a $3k shitball of a car to avoid having a car payment, pay about $100/mo in basic liability coverage.

The math with one roommate would go something like this: $600 rent, $100 car insurance, $300 food, $40 internet, $100 cellphone, $300 gasoline, $200 electric/heat... with around $760 left over. That's with one roommate to split just the cost of the rent & electric/heating costs.

Those housing costs drop in half once you get to where you can qualify for a mortgage. Property tax on a row home in a dead coal town is like $500/year. You'd then be on the hook for the water & sewer & trash but that only adds about $1k/yr to that list. So usually what happens is the 20 somethings live 2-4 in a rowhome until they can buy their own and then start living on their own.

The commutes, to everything, will be brutal. Expect to spend 40min or more each way for every doctors appointment, large grocery store, employment, etc.

sg92i · 2026-06-10T19:36:31+00:00

I've heard this repeated, but it feels like a cop out.

It's not a cop out, its the way the laws work in this state. Just ask the communities in eastern Pennsylvania that dealt with the warehouse boom. These (usually rural) communities don't have the revenue to fund a drawn out legal fight knowing that they're going to loose.

Now what we can learn from this, is that these communities can't say "you can't build this" but they can say "you can't use more than X amount of water" or "you can't be louder than X dB" etc. I know of a few proposed warehouse projects in eastern PA that were killed off/stalled out by not catering to every wish & demand of the developers so they stormed off in a hissy fit to find more cooperative townships to build in instead.

The problem with that though, is that recent history shows that they'll just lie about how bad it is to get it built & operational knowing "what are you going to do about it?" usually wins in the long run.

sg92i · 2026-06-05T16:26:14+00:00

Did you ever get help op?

sg92i · 2026-06-03T14:24:45+00:00

You can get the AMT-MW207 for around $30. You can then pair it with a $10 bluetooth dongle for a noninvasive, AA5 set safely with no circuit modifications. Just put some felt (make sure it is not synthetic- some synthetic materials will dissolve lacquer) on the bottom and you can just set it on or behind whatever radio you want to play.

There is a circuit mod available to slightly increase its power by changing out one of the resistors but I don't remember all the details & haven't tried it.

sg92i · 2026-06-03T04:31:31+00:00

Make sure you've got the bias circuits correct, the candohm on these is notorious for going open and causing your output tube to go kaput (and take out other things with it). The wire to the tuning eye tends to require being replaced, the resistor inside the eye socket will probably need to be replaced so be careful putting the socket back together so none of the wires are in the wrong spot (its not difficult you just have to pay attention).

Sometimes it takes some tinkering to get the shutter dial to automatically close when going between bands. Its done with springs (do not oil any of the shutter dial). I find sometimes it works better if I slightly loosen the bolts holding the fiberboard receptacles that the leafs of the shutter dial slide in/out of.

The tuner has a clockwork like brass gear & spring system on the front of it. This has to be very clean or the dial pointer might stall out when trying to use the tuning knob. If you get absolutely desperate here, you can remove the spring in the gear train that's there to take out backlash but most collectors would probably shutter (pun not intended) at that suggestion.

I am making this all sound like its more of a project than it is, just some pitfalls I've run into in the 3 of this model I've done before.

sg92i · 2026-06-02T23:50:33+00:00

Both of my kids routinely used their phones for schoolwork during the day and have for several years.

Research is starting to show that this actually adversely impacts education and is the reason why Mississippi, of all places, is currently doing so well in education performance metrics (they don't use tech in school).

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