{"id":3831,"date":"2015-03-05T13:12:37","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T19:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:03","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:03","slug":"boy-doug-you-sure-have-a-nerve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/boy-doug-you-sure-have-a-nerve\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy, Doug You Sure Have Some Nerve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting in the doctor\u2019s office the other day..I heard those words no patient ever wants to hear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry, Doug. Your condition is irreversible.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to list my short list of options; both are scary to ponder but offer my only hope to end the pain.<\/p>\n

Okay, okay..enough with the theatrics; the doctor is my new dentist. (Previous one retired..presumably with a good dental plan.) My irreversible condition is an upper molar which was professionally covered with an expensive crown several years ago..but has decided to become \u00a0troublesome..like a gremlin sitting on my shoulder with a ball peen hammer banging on my cheek. It was called a \u201cpermanent\u201d crown back then..but that wasn\u2019t entirely true. Oh, it still looks okay on the outside and an X-ray showed no gaping holes beneath the surface, but the nerve below molar number one has decided, in my old age, to erupt into convulsions each time anything with a temperature that\u2019s \u00a0hotter or colder than tepid.. slides by; manifesting its displeasure with a knee-buckling jolt of pain that eventually mellows into an agonizing ache which can then only be moderately tolerated through the use of copious amounts of Ibuprofen.<\/p>\n

( At least 16 a day.)<\/p>\n

Well, it was bad enough to get me out of the house and into a dentist\u2019s office; no small feat especially since I don\u2019t have dental insurance any more.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I learned about my options; root canal or extraction.<\/p>\n

\"dentist\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I once had my wisdom teeth pulled (no jokes please) and don\u2019t remember anything about it since I opted to be put under during the procedure and never felt a thing.<\/p>\n

In fact, I used to visit the dentist on a regular basis because I\u2019ve always had pretty good teeth (in spite of the David Letterman-size gap up front and canines that are so long and pointy I could play Dracula without a special dental fitting) and wanted to keep them that way. Plus, my dentist wasn\u2019t fussy about cranking up the Nitrous Oxide to help mask any discomfort I might experience in the chair. The only problem with Nitrous, I found, was holding back the urge to giggle when imagining all the commotion going on in my wide gaping mouth including occasional wisps of smoke coming from the drill as he tore through an old metal filling. Hilarious.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t say my family and I ever looked forward to dental visits but I didn\u2019t worry about them either knowing that whatever needed doing was covered by our plan at work.<\/p>\n

The sad reality is, however, once that expires after retirement..you\u2019re pretty much on your own. At least Medicare doesn\u2019t give a fat rat\u2019s patootie about the care and keeping of teeth. That may explain why so many of us geezers are such a misery; our teeth hurt and we don\u2019t have the coin to pay for insurance or money in the bank to see a dentist as often as we need to.<\/p>\n

By the way..I went with the \u00a0root canal. It\u2019s more expensive than pulling but it turns out that particular molar is one of the busiest guys in the chewing line and would be sorely missed..where now it\u2019s just sore. We are lucky in that we have enough in savings to cover it and our family dentist gives a 10% discount to antique people.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0 don\u2019t mean to get too political here but it seems if the government would clean up half of the Medicare fraud and abuse exposed by 60 Minutes or PBS in just one year, there would be more than enough in the kitty to fund assistance toward dental and vision care for seniors.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the next elected representative who calls Social Security or Medicare (which I and millions of others have paid into our entire working life) \u201centitlement programs\u201d don\u2019t be surprised if you see a bunch of grey haired folks with bad toothaches storming into your offices prepared to give a lesson on who\u2019s entitled to what.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sitting in the doctor\u2019s office the other day..I heard those words no patient ever wants to hear. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Doug. Your condition is irreversible.\u201d He went on to list my short list of options; both are scary to ponder but offer my only hope to end the pain. Okay, okay..enough with the theatrics; the doctor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3831"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11577,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions\/11577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}