Rachel Nabors

02:02 pm: Front page, ho!
I think I've got my front page looking the way I want it. Lookit!

I'll be feeding my latest LJ post onto the front page. Right now I'm testing for whether or not LJ posts can be trusted to validate.

10:38 pm: I have returned from the orthodontist: of poverty and teeth.

Before I start, I would like to thank everyone who has donated in the past few days. Thanks to you guys, we're at $7637.21 USD. That's over $100 in one week. Thank you so much. It's people like you who keep me from giving up or despairing.

So I recently went to see my new orthodontist, and now I have a shiny estimate for 20 months of braces. I posted the estimate on flickr for you to read, but in short, it comes to about $6000.

I paid the $25 for the visit, but the $280 setup fee will have to wait until I've consulted with an orthognathic surgeon first. If I pay all $6000 up front, they knock $350 off. I will probably do that because I already know I'll be going through with this, and thanks to the generous donations of people, I have enough cash to do that. In that news, I've applied for a PayPal debit card so I can pay for it all without the donation money ever touching my bank account. Nifty, huh? And Leigh is auditing the PayPal account, too, so rest assured I won't use the money for chai lattes :) I'm still sort of in shock that so many people have made it possible to get braces. But, there's still so far to go with the surgery, which may be more complicated than originally estimated.

They gave me a copy of the evaluation that states that I really do need surgery (no, it's not in my head)! Look for yourself.

I'm sure there are people out there who have the notion that this is some sort of cosmetic whim. Trust me, if I gave cared about how my teeth looked, I would have insisted on getting braces when I was teenager (and I'd have wanted my teeth whitened, too, to get rid of all the tea stains). It was only when I was too old to qualify for any state help that I learned that, oops, I have a crooked jaw that is shifting my teeth around and causing my jaw bone to thin, my joints to wear out, and my teeth to loosen.

It's not just crooked teeth. It's a crooked jaw. A crooked face.

We have enough in the fund to cover the braces, but he thnks I might need some extra surgery on my upper jaw (so, um, right, expect that $10,000 estimate for surgery to jump to $15,000). So we're about $9-14k away from surgery.

Anyway, he doesn't want to slap the braces on until I get a second opinion from an orthognathic surgeon. He also thinks I should get some kind of insurance (being unemployed right now, that makes me laugh), and said he'd call some fellows to see which, if any, insurance companies pitch in for this sort of thing. Although, he did warn that often they will tell you they will cover something until you send them the bill, leaving you stuck with the fees! Isn't that fun? Isn't it? This uncertainty??

So I'm waiting to hear back from him with those insurance companies, but I have a suspicion I won't, as dental people are notoriously absentminded. I also don't have any faith that insurance is the answer, as I have not received one email during the fund raising from a person with my condition where it was covered by insurance. I have received many from people who had my condition who stated the opposite: insurance companies have little to no interest in paying for your expensive surgery that prevents your teeth from falling out of your head. But they might cover replacements!

I liked the people at the office. No bullshitting. No pressure tactics (in fact, he said that my teeth have been out of whack for so long another month or two to straighten things up with the surgeon won't hurt). I also got to look at x-rays (which they didn't charge for, but wouldn't let me leave with copies of, or I would show them to you). They took one of my entire head, and damn if I don't have the biggest jaw I've ever seen on a girl.

The assistant, when she was getting my information before we started all this, was fairly optimistic, as they all are, actually playing with the idea that my crossbite might be fixed with orthodontry and braces alone. And then she took the x-rays.

There's a point during all of these visits when the people involved realize you aren't some kind of hypochondriac and you aren't overreacting. You can watch as it dawns on the uninitiated that, oh shit, this girl needs expensive surgery in her face! And she's poor! How's this going to work? The assistant looked at the x-ray of my head and said what I've always known. "See, no one would ever know you have such a deviation. You have a perfect profile."

Other bits of useful information I gleaned from the visit:
1. My teeth will start moving around faster and faster as I age. (This is why I can't put this off until, say, I've gone to college, made a career for myself and become a billionaire. My teeth/jaw will be severely damaged and thinned by then.)

2. For the first year of braces leading up to surgery, I will feel like my bite is getting worse rather than better. (This is why I didn't buy that lipstick the other day. Try feeling good about putting something on when you don't recognize your face in the mirror.) As my teeth are hauled into their correct positions, they won't be able to compensated for my bad bite. I'm actually cool with this, because it means I'll be on the road to a fixed jaw. Appearance doesn't matter to me. Functionality, longterm use, those matter.

3. For the love of god, don't eat chewy things, including steaks and chicken breasts! No gum, caramel or taffy. No carrot sticks. No crunchy cereal. (I already know this, but it was reiterated to me so I thought I would impress upon it here.)

4. My jaw joint that's coming unhinged will probably never be good as new, but at least it won't get too far gone. I'm actually really happy that all it does is pop out of place from time to time. I've gotten emails from people whose mouths get stuck open or won't open much at all. A weak joint seems like nothing in comparison.

5. I will have to wear a retainer two or three times a week for the rest of my life. That saddens me, but I accept it.


It could be worse, yes, I could live on the streets or have expensive-to-cure but deadly cancer. But my problem could also not exist. I could also spend $15-25k on a college education that sets me up for a life of reasonable employment. But no, every little scrap I get is going to go into fixing something that's wrong with my body, something that shouldn't be broken. It makes me so sad. And my case isn't even terminal! I'm not going to die, just wear out my jaw! What about people with horrible illnesses in my position? What happens to them? Do they fall through the cracks, too?

I have been reading a set of blog entries about firsthand bankruptcy and poverty that Leigh linked to. I'll repost them here:
Broke Part 1
Broke Part 2
Broke Part 3

I haven't finished reading them all yet, so expect further ranting to come, having been impoverished for most of my life (I even qualified for medicaid while I was under 19). I will say this much, though. People don't get it. Like that assistant who was surprised that my profile was normal, perfect even, but it masked a deviation. You can't see it, so I must not have a problem. You can't see poverty, so I must not be poor.

The working poor are all around us. They check you out at the grocery store. They clean up after you at Target. They have their own dreams and aspirations, and we would like to think that they are stuck there because of a lack of determination or effort, but more often than not, the causes are external.

But we like to place the blame on them because it removes the guilt we would feel as a failure of human society. But what are we doing to help them, to lift them up, to prevent them from falling so far? It's hard to live your dreams when you're struggling to keep your head above water.

The next time you're out and someone is serving you, at a checkout, at the diner, driving your bus, please, look them in the eye and thank them and mean it.

Tags: teeth