There is nothing harder, or scarier, to write about than money. Especially when you are afraid, and struggling, and having to make hard decisions about things that require money that you just don’t have. What do you do? I debated about writing about this but because I know that whatever the age or the issue a lot of people are struggling and afraid about money these days and I thought it might be helpful, or perhaps help someone feel less alone, if they were able to read about someone else facing just this, and what they did about it, and why it is so difficult to get by when so many people in the world can’t imagine being in your shoes, or perhaps even worry about being just where you are. This is my story right now, for whatever it might be worth. I want to use this  September Blogging Challenge With Effy to try to reach out to others in every way I can. “Each one, reach one.”

I have been writing about my toothache that has had my whole jaw aching. I also talked in a recent post about how hard it is to make it through when you suffer from mental illness so are not able to work outside the home, and in my case, at 63, there are many things that just will come up with aging, and when you are worried about money all time time what do you do when something comes up? You let yourself have a good cry, you talk to your dear ones for support, and then you look for help or solutions, and finally you make what can be very hard decisions. Yesterday I went to the dentist, at the clinic where I have just started going because I can no longer afford even my small dental insurance policy. It was heartbreaking for me to lose my private dentist of 22 years, but you do what you have to do. I registered at the clinic for dental care because I knew cleanings were only $35 and that other services were supposed to be cheap, much cheaper than going to a regular dentist. I learned yesterday that what can be “cheaper” can still not be affordable. I left the dentist crying, and scared.

I went in at 4. They did an x-ray to determine what was going on with the tooth. It is my back molar on the bottom right side, the existing back molar because I had the one in the way back pulled three years ago for the same reasons I am facing now. The dentist wanted to do a root canal, and then put on a crown. It is really, really expensive. $1000-$2,000, closer to $2,000 with the root canal and the crown. She said she could just try putting a temporary crown on and see if that would help and if it did in a few weeks they would put a permanent crown on. And she said — this was at the clinic, just for the crown — that it would be almost $600 to get it done, and that was such a good price because the crown alone would be $1200 at a regular dentist. But I would most likely need to have a root canal too and they didn’t do this at the clinic, I would have to go to a regular dentist. (Having just quit my regular dentist and no longer having dental insurance I have nowhere else to go and no way to get any kind of help without insurance to pay the cost of a root canal which would be well over $1000 I was told.) Then I was told that of course they could do all of this and it might not help at all anyway and then I’d have to have the tooth pulled. I went in to the dentist yesterday expecting the tooth to be pulled but the dentist said she didn’t want to do that if she didn’t have to because then I’d have both back molars out on that side and it would destabilize the other teeth and weaken them so that eventually they would probably have to be pulled. I sat there in shock with tears running down my cheeks. And here’s the thing…

It just kills me how, when they have someone sitting in the chair who just came for the first time last week saying she could no longer afford dental care or dental insurance elsewhere and they look at you and, straight-faced, tell you how lucky you are to only have to pay close to $600 because it was double that elsewhere, what part of “I came here because I could only afford the $35 teeth cleanings” did they not get? And the root canal, and then all of that might be for naught anyway? I could not stop crying nor could I move from the chair. I didn’t know what to say or do. She gave me a prescription for pain medication that she told me to alternate with ibuprofen to get me through a few days until I could make up my mind what I wanted to do. I walked all the way out of the clinic to my car crying. I sat in my car crying and afraid. I felt so lost.

And the thing is it was just like at my last visit with my dentist. I told her I was so sorry, that I thought the world of her, appreciated all that she had done for me over the years, but that I could no longer afford dental insurance. I was paying $55 a month for a dental policy so that I could get my teeth cleaning “free” twice a year. I could have paid $100 for teeth cleanings twice a year and still paid much less than the dental insurance cost, but $100 for teeth cleanings, more with x-rays, would be too much for me in a month anyway. When the dentist looked at me and said, “Just get rid of the dental insurance and pay for the teeth cleanings, they’re only 100 bucks” I realized that she could not even imagine that $100 extra in a month was not possible. That “100 bucks” is indeed a lot of money to some of us. And if something else came along — like this situation came up so soon thereafter — even with insurance I don’t know how I’d have payed for it and now I have no dental insurance at all.

People for whom $100 extra, and often several hundred dollars extra, in a month is no big deal, cannot comprehend what it means to not be able to afford that not to mention being frightened and in pain and not begin to know what to do. I drove to the pharmacy and got the pain medication and I came home and took it. I was in shock, and I hurt, and the clock was ticking. I had to figure out what to do.

I realized that this was where I had to make a decision about what I was going to do for the rest of my life, that’s how big it is, because it isn’t about this one tooth. If I could somehow come up with the money to get this one tooth taken care of — and it might not work anyway — who’s to say that at 63, when I’ve reached the age when other teeth could develop problems, it would not just be an ongoing, terror-filled thing waiting for the other shoe to drop, and not having the money for those “shoes,” or rather teeth, to be fixed either. I could live in fear year after year trying frantically to come up with money to get a tooth fixed or I could just have it pulled, take the best care of my teeth as I can and hope they hold on, and finally just have teeth pulled when they need to be pulled and one day perhaps end up with a partial plate or even dentures. I decided that this wasn’t what I would like to do, this is what I have to do. I’m 63, cannot afford expensive dental care, so there was no other solution. Or was there?

What I’m about to say next will be controversial to some, but could be a help to others so I will present you with the full solution I came up with. I had heard about all manner of dental issues being able to be cured naturally. I didn’t know much of anything about it but I found the most amazing website last night and people with far worse problems that I’m having have used natural remedies to heal all kinds of tooth issues. I have decided to use whatever natural means that I can to try to heal this issue. The x-ray showed that there was no abscess, no new cavity — the tooth was filled decades ago and the filling has so far held — and she couldn’t even see a crack in the tooth although she felt there must be a very small one, but she said a very small crack shouldn’t be cause the pain I was having and she felt it could be from clenching my jaw or grinding my teeth at night, and if there was a small crack the grinding would cause a lot of jaw pain. What do I have to lose? There are a lot of really interesting case studies of teeth being cured from all kinds of things, and if push comes to shove and it won’t get better and I have to have it pulled anyway I’m no worse off for trying.

(And please, I’d ask gently at this juncture, don’t write to me and tell me how natural tooth remedies don’t work and I’m foolish to try. I’ve come to a decision that was hard to come to and that I feel good about and trying to dissuade me would not be helpful…)

So finally this is what I have decided and I am at peace with my decision. It is long thought out, and I feel good about it. I will do what I can through natural means (Last night I threw out my old toothbrush and my “regular” toothpaste and used a natural toothpaste and new toothbrush — the site has lots to say about what regular toothpaste does to your teeth and it’s not good, I’ve known this for a long time but just never made the switch, plus I did use a warm salt water solution held in my mouth for 5 minutes, they suggest 10 which I’ll work up to.) AND PLEASE KNOW THAT I AM NOT PRESCRIBING ANYTHING NOR TRYING TO INFLUENCE ANYONE ELSE TO DO THIS SORT OF THING, this is simply what I have decided I am going to do for me. The website is amazing. It is free, natural, and holistic. It is at: Healing Teeth Naturally. Frankly, having read through a lot of the site last night I wish I’d made a lot of these changes long ago anyway.

I don’t know if any of this has helped you, perhaps helped you feel less alone if you are going through some of these things yourself, but know that I offer my experience with love, a deep sense of caring, and in the hope that someone else might know about this resource before they need it so they are not as frightened and feeling so lost and hopeless as I did yesterday.

May we all be well, may we help one another as much as we’re able, and may we always know that there are solutions, there is help, we can find a way…