At Their Utter Mercy

At Their Utter Mercy - Hi everyone! - As I unbelievably just turned 50 myself, I am now seriously beginning to wonder what someone 20 or 30 years my senior must be going through in this country, especially with respect to health care issues. After 10 years here I think, I can wholeheartedly claim that I have seen enough to draw one rather epiphanic conclusion for myself which is, 'Holy smokes! Just do everything in your power to stay healthy!' Truly humbled, I might indeed want to consider myself lucky overall, knock on wood, as I have evidently fared pretty well so far in terms of general health. Believe me, alone what TV shows have shown and taught me during the last decade here makes me so much more appreciative and grateful. Except for sporadic dental flareups - 16 dentists and still counting - I would like to refer to myself as a fairly healthy human being and would certainly prefer to keep it like that. I am saying this because just looking at the many bureaucratic steps that are required to qualify for medical insurance, let lone tackling the process of actually applying for it in fact made us cringe so badly that we felt absolutely discouraged and initially did not even want to bother with any of that. How pathetic does this sound in all earnest? Right, pretty bad. For eight years we had no insurance whatsoever and regarded ourselves as loose scrap parts drifting through a giant universe. I vividly remember visiting Aspen Dental about two years into my stay here. The shock we got that day after a thorough evaluation plus subsequent estimate will certainly stay with us for the rest of our lives. I still can't grasp how boldly astronomic those suggested far- fetched figures were! As a logical consequence, we instantly backed away rather instinctively and would never return, and I unfortunately started to let it slide for another six years. Now that we luckily have access to heath insurance, I have finally summoned my courage or what was left of it and begun to face reality. Well, the verdict was rather expectedly several cavities which would clearly not scare the bejesus out of me if I still lived in good old socialist Austria where the troubled teeth would more or less immediately and more importantly most adequately be taken care of. Here though, I have just received a bit of a fairly harsh reality check as I am presently confronted with a quest of unprecedented extent. At the dental clinic I was informed back in February that their dentists would just not be able to perform longer treatments due to extreme time pressure and narrow time slots and could therefore not tend to a likely root canal issue until June or July. Are you kidding me??? As if that was not enough yet, I also learnt that day that root canal procedures are exclusively done by root canal specialists, called Endodontists. Say what??? Well, on the bright side, I somewhat seem to be expanding my English vocabulary these days even though I am not quite sure if there will ever be use for such exquisite words in class. All joking aside for a second, though. Since when does a patient need to drag their butt from a dentist to an endodontist or orthodontist, go from a gynecologist to a GYN OB and further on to an obstetrician, wander from an optometrist to an opthamologist, etc.? Are you getting my point? In my tiny but rich home country I would for one go and see A dentist, A gynecologist, An eye doctor and stay with that one all- round specialist throughout the entire period of treatment. Quite simple, and what's more, pretty time and cost effective, don't you think? Seriously, when did this all start becoming so darn manifold, aggravatingly complicated and above all so unnecessarily diverse? Anyway, back to my current and highly possible root canal issue which is slowly starting to scream foul. After several annoyingly time- wasting runarounds I still can't seem to find a local endodontist who would be willing to work on a stigmatized case of typical shoe- string budget patient. After all, the choices for us paupers are generally extremely limited when it comes to this sort of poor man's insurance to approve such an insanely costly treatment such as multiple root canal sessions for one single tooth. "Okay, so what exactly does this imply?", I asked and harvested a scary one- word response which is still echoing in my ears, "EXTRACTION". Are you serious??? But then it suddenly dawned on me rather grimly. No wonder that so many poor Americans run around with missing or no teeth at all! Sorry, but this is truly a crying shame and would just be unthinkable in my country - mind you, not just for reasons of esthetics. Does anyone here ever pay attention to that universal truth according to which the teeth decide over fair or poor health? It is commonly known throughout Europe that untreated tooth decay will in the long run lead to severe health issues of the heart, blood, eyes, digestion, as well as other parts. And just pulling teeth instead of fixing them often leads to bone deformities, bone loss, gum diseases and likely to the necessity of using false teeth as the chances for a successful job employment are pretty much in the wind once gaps, holes and spaces are openly displayed. Last but not least, false teeth as we know - unless they are painfully implanted into your jaws which is also no option for the least wealthy among us - often turn out to be nothing but another pesky problem. From this point of view, I do very much prefer the restorative philosophy behind dental treatment that I grew up with and would love to hold on to this approach for as long as I possibly can. In this sense, please wish me luck that I may defy the odds and find a way to save my tooth in the end.  - More about being at the mercy of the system next time.