Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado Read Free Book Online Page B

teeth, I cease feeling anything like alluring.
    My teeth have become one of my most hated obsessions. I’m constantly reminding myself to keep my fucking mouth shut (which has its side benefits in that never shutting up hasbeen a problem for me in my life) and to make sure my denture is adjusted properly so I don’t have weird sunken-mouth lips. I have two broken-to-the-point-of-missing teeth that are visible on the right top side, and I use cotton wadding to cover that as far as the basic “something vaguely whitish that has mass” concerns. I worry at my teeth with my tongue, testing which are still sound enough to masticate should I be caught in a rare public eating situation. I take prophylactic ibuprofen so the swelling doesn’t get out of control. There’s no good way to predict the swelling, and once it’s started, the pain isn’t quite the worst, but your productivity is pretty much gone for the day. As soon as the swelling sets in, there isn’t much you can do besides hold ice to your cheek and pray.
    When I was in acute pain, before I learned better, I used to go to urgent care or the ER. A lot of urgent cares won’t dispense painkillers. My guess has always been that they assume you’re an addict or a seller. In the ER, I think they figure that the wait and the bills are enough to deter most abusers, so they’ll give you a day or maybe two of real no-shit medicine to get you through a few days’ work. To get any sort of actual medicinal regimen, you have to have an actual doctor, a general practitioner. I don’t have time to chase down a doctor’s appointment when I’m in pain.
    So why, I am asked, have I simply not gone to one of the free dental clinics? Well, because they aren’t exactly flinging their doors open. I’ve researched some programs, looking for anyone who could help. Sometimes I am too rich, because I have a job at all. Sometimes I live in the wrong county, andthe grant providing the funds is restricted to residents of the next county. A few times I’ve been unable to take off enough time from work to make it to where the clinic is, much less to do it for the multiple visits required to complete the job. Twice I’ve been told that they don’t do critical cases, only basic cleanings and fillings, both of which are laughably inadequate at this point. So I have carried on, hoping to get dental insurance at some point. What I refused to confront or articulate for years was that it was likely I’d simply wind up being one of those gross people with no teeth. Probably by the age of thirty-five.
    But rationality rarely enters into health care. Mostly, at least for me, medicine has been a patchwork of what’s around when I really can’t avoid seeking care for a second longer. And most of my interactions with the health care industry have pretty much made me want to avoid it all the more from then on. ER visits usually involve waiting for hours and then being handed a couple of ibuprofen for my trouble. And the whole time I’m waiting for those ibuprofen, I get to wonder what the bill’s going to come out to and whether I should stay and wait longer or just go home and hope for the best.
    —
    Look, I’m not stupid. I can
be
stupid, but I’m usually fairly savvy. I can read at a college level. I can do complex math problems given enough time and scratch paper. But I had trouble finding medical care.
    Well, scratch that. I have had trouble finding
decent
medical care. It’s why I didn’t have prenatal care for my oldest daughter. I found out I was pregnant in October, days before the last election I ever worked on. I had a suspicion I was pregnant—I mean, that’s why I’d peed on seven pregnancy sticks, all of which had turned out positive. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe the results, since I’d been told so many times that it was practically impossible for me to get pregnant. I made a command decision that all those store-bought tests had to have been defective. So I