Kat's Dental Care, TT: GanondorfsMuse

I'm Kat. I turned 29 in August this year. I'm not sure what to say, so here's my life story so far:

I was born into poverty. I watched my mom stay in abusive relationships for a place to stay my entire childhood. When that didn't work out, we stayed with my grandma. When they didn't want a plus one, I stayed with my grandma. Lots of people had childhoods worse than mine and I try very hard to stay grateful for what I do have. We had a lot of ramen, potted meat sandwiches, and those fake soy hamburgers. As a child I had chronic sinusitis, chronic bronchitis, joint pain, and stomach issues. At 9 I was diagnosed with GERD after waking up one night covered in bile. I was later diagnosed with gastroparesis. I was anemic and vitamin deficienct and malnourished and overweight. I saw gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, and orthopedic specialists. At age 12 I was diagnosed with PCOS - which affected my ovaries, my hormone levels, and my weight (due to the insulin resistance associated with PCOS.)

I did really well in school, dropped out and got my GED when I was 16 and started a vocational college program. I was a nationally certified medical assistant at 17. When I was 18, the man I was engaged to got me pregnant in my sleep while I was on prescription sleeping pills for insomnia. I had always been told I couldn't have children so I did everything I could to make sure my baby would be safe. I had a high risk pregnancy and had to get fluids everyday and I was losing weight from hyperemesis. I eventually lost my job "for attendance." At 29 weeks I was admitted to the hospital with preeclampsia after going for my first tooth extraction and having blood pressure 160/110 at the dental office. At 30 weeks I had an emergency c section after I started having seizures because IV meds weren't helping. After I turned 21, I had a tubal ligation to avoid risk of death with another pregnancy. Eventually after a few more years of pain and bleeding through adult diapers, I was diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis and had a hysterectomy at age 23-24.

I was overweight for most of my life. I remember being underweight as a small child until after I started having night terrors and was admitted to a mental hospital at age 7 when they started me on a medication that made me rapidly gain weight. By age 11 I was 243 pounds and around 5'8. As an adult at my heaviest I was 323 pounds and had been referred for weight loss surgery several times by my doctor's starting at age 16. In 2017 I found the ketogenic diet and decided to do something about all my extra weight. I showed my research to my surgeon and he supported me. I had VSG surgery in December of that year and was 286 pounds on the day of surgery. The doctor expected me to get down to about 205. At my one year follow-up, he diagnosed me with food aversion because I had developed an eating disorder. I weigh 135 on a good week now and 130 on a bad week. I am 5'8.5" and have several pounds of loose skin. My weight was usually always blamed for the reason I had health issues. I was diagnosed with the endometriosis, ADHD, and rheumatoid arthritis after I lost all the weight and doctors started actually listening to me. After years of struggling and having my therapists, psychiatrists, and doctors telling me to, I applied for disability. I had a court hearing and listened to how useless I sounded on paper. They said I was "unemployable" and "totally disabled" and then I was denied SSI for "lack of work credits." Every time I have a job I'm always "the best employee ever" for a couple of months and then I get sick or I have a meltdown and I get fired.

When my child was 3 years old, life took a big hit when the biological father of my child sexually abused her. I filed a report and he was arrested and took a plea bargain for 10 years in prison on a lesser charge. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, we left the state to move to Arkansas where my best friend offered to let us stay with her. Since moving to Arkansas it has been very hard to get state insurance (Medicaid.) Where I'm from, Florida, if you inform them the other parent is incarcerated they don't ask for further paperwork for child support. Here in Arkansas, I filed a "good cause" claim to excuse the child support part complete with court documents and then still filled out all the child support paperwork and turned that in too. They sent me a child support debit card in the mail (with no balance) which means they received my documents. A month later, they canceled my medical coverage. My child is still covered and so I've been too afraid to reapply and lose her medical care, so I just haven't gone to the doctor in a few years.

As a kid, I didn't really have dental care. My teeth have gaps and two of them are sideways, I have an overbite and I was made fun of a lot for my crooked and overcrowded teeth. I remember getting a cleaning and X-rays once, a filling once, and having a dead tooth pulled. My grandma had temporary custody of me during those two or three trips. When I got on Medicaid after losing my job when I was pregnant at 18, I had two cleanings a year for 2 years, a filling, and my first adult tooth pulled when it cracked during pregnancy. When I was 20, I had to travel a few cities over to go to a dental surgeon who took Medicaid to have my wisdom teeth surgically extracted before I turned 21 and they wouldn't cover it. I broke another tooth (same lower molar, other side) when I was 22 and Medicaid would only cover an extraction. No cleanings, no root canal, no fillings. Only pulling. I'm 29 now and that was the last time I saw a dentist before I made an appointment for a "free consultation" for dentures at Aspen 9/12/23. They quoted me $11,000 for 26 extractions, immediate dentures and permanent dentures. I have 26 teeth and every single one of them is broken. My gums throb constantly. I can't eat anything that I have to chew. I'm constantly in pain and I do my best to manage with clove oil, original Listerine to deaden the nerves, Tylenol, and ibuprofen. (I'm not supposed to take either of those because I overdosed on Tylenol when I was 15 and I'm not supposed to have nsaids with my stomach problems.) I have a hard time smiling or laughing or even sometimes making conversation. I get called a drug addict constantly and it gets to me more than I would like because I've known so many people who used drugs and aren't around anymore to talk about it. Things like that have made it really difficult for me to ask for help. I've been made to feel like a burden and a waste of space my entire life and I'm just trying so hard to see the positives. I have felt like it would be selfish to ask for help with my teeth because we don't have a place of our own and a house would be more beneficial to my child. So I've thought about it a lot lately and I realize this absolutely does affect my child. People's judgement of me will absolutely affect them. What I can cook for us all to eat is largely based on how soft the food will be. On the rare occasion that we go to a restaurant, there are so many options that are off the table because they don't have anything I can chew. And the pain makes me snappy a lot of the time. I feel very guilty about that most days.

This has been a very hard few years for everyone. My grandma passed away about a year and a half ago from colon cancer. Then a friend I've known since I was 11 committed suicide. In February this year my childhood best friend overdosed and passed on. Shortly after we moved here, my best friend had a reoccurrence of ovarian cancer and developed cervical cancer on top of that. We watched her fight for her life and she passed on at the end of April this year at 29 years old. A couple weeks ago one of our dogs stopped eating and we got her in at the earliest available appointment. After a very long 3 days of daily vet visits, she had stage 5 lymphoma and her health deteriorated so quickly that to end her suffering the vet helped us put her to rest yesterday. So I'm going to stop being scared to ask for help. We really need a win. Things have to get better. They have to.

Thank you for reading and thank you for showing compassion and love. I hope things get better for us all.

**After all the comments and stories everyone shared about Aspen, I have been seeking other providers. Many people recommended Affordable Dentures. I have an appointment on 9/25/23 for a denture consultation. I will update the concrete financial needs at that time but have set the fundraiser up to get it started after so many people showed compassion and offered to donate to one if I created it. Thank you so much to all of you.