Please Help Me Put an End to 40 Years of Dental Pain

Hello, my name is Louise, and I have teeth so bad that they make me want to die.

It started when I was a kid. An accident involving a door opening in an unexpected direction resulted in eight-year-old me needing to have my two front teeth pulled. “They’re baby teeth,” said the dentist. “She’ll be fine.”

Spoiler: She wasn’t fine.

When my adult teeth came in, they were too big for my little face. Excessively big. What’s worse, the teeth on either side of them were still tiny baby teeth, making them look even bigger. Adding insult to injury was when those teeth finally fell out and nothing grew in to replace them. These were the first indications of the painful, chaotic journey my teeth would take me on for the next forty years.

When I was very small, we had dental insurance. My father also had a very good job, so I was able to see the dentist regularly until the age of ten, when my father was suddenly laid off during a strike. He lost his dental coverage, which meant I did, too. I don’t remember seeing a dentist again as a child after that, and certainly didn’t see one as a teenager because my mother was busy dying of cancer.

Every cent we had went to her treatments and care. I left high school to care for her and admittedly, I let a lot of my own care slide in favor of hers. I didn’t always brush my teeth—grief robs you of the energy to perform even the smallest tasks—and I developed a nasty soda habit to cope. She died when I was seventeen, and I left my hometown of Sacramento for New York City a few months later.

Imagine this: you’re a grieving teenager alone in the world for the first time in your life, lost in the big city. You have no work experience, $400 to your name, and nowhere to live. My first job was Cast Member at a Disney Store in Manhattan that paid $6 an hour. I wasn’t going to be seeing any dentists on those wages, and if you think Disney was going to provide a part-time retail drone with dental insurance—lol, I have a bridge to sell you.

The next few years would be a tumultuous attempt on my part to outrun my grief by moving around, following rock bands around, and hopping from job to job. Unbeknownst to me, I was both autistic and riddled with untreated ADHD, so keeping a job when you’re such a little bundle of complications is tricky, and I wasn’t very good at it. With few exceptions—a brief stint as a Gamemaster for World of Warcraft, a copywriter for Saatchi and Saatchi, a personal assistant to the CEO of an audio equipment company—I’ve been stuck in dead-end customer service positions for thirty years, with no end in sight. I can never retire. I will never own a house. I will die in poverty; of this I am certain.

And, obviously, I haven’t been able to see a dentist with any kind of consistency over the years. Dental insurance in the United States is, in truth, a scam. You pay for an extremely limited amount of coverage and most plans cap their coverage at anywhere between $750-$2000, which does not cover even a single root canal. Dental care in the US is unnecessarily expensive—largely because it is expensive to become a dentist and operate a practice. As a result, even something so simple as a filling can cost hundreds of dollars.

In my case, lack of care was not the only issue. I was born without several of my adult teeth. One of my teeth decided to grow sideways inside my jaw, which necessitated surgery to remove. My top front teeth are off-center as a result. I have soft enamel, periodontal disease, and bone loss in my jaw. Because of the high costs of care, whenever I would develop a problem, the cheapest solution was to just pull the tooth. Not ideal, but when you’re in an extreme amount of pain from an abscess bad enough to stop a human heart, you’ll do what you must do to make it stop.

Yes, I have performed my own extractions. No, I don’t recommend it.

I have sixteen teeth remaining. I am now unable to chew properly and have almost stopped eating solid food entirely. I am rapidly losing weight, and my mouth hurts all the time, every day. I wake up in pain and go to bed in pain. Eating hurts every single time. Sometimes my gums are so inflamed I can’t even drink or swallow. I struggle with multiple infections a year, and it’s almost certain my teeth are the source of my chronic migraines.

Dental health directly impacts your overall health. If you can’t eat properly, you lose nutrition and weight and muscle mass. Abscesses can go straight to your heart or brain and end your life. Your teeth aren’t for looks, they’re not a cosmetic feature, they are functional parts of your body and should be treated the same as any other part of your body—and insured the same.

Not to mention the mental and emotional toll this takes. I have been ugly my *entire* life. It has absolutely destroyed my self-esteem. I hate my face. I avoid mirrors. I never smile in photos. I do not date because no one wants to kiss a mouth full of garbage teeth. And the things people say are cruel at best, dehumanizing at worst. Customers talk to my mouth, not me. I’ve been asked flat-out by strangers if I lost my teeth to drugs (no). I’ve been called Meth Mouth, Snaggletooth, Jack-O-Lantern, Toothless—sometimes even by dentists themselves. Dentists have paraded me around their offices as a cautionary tale, using me to frighten children into brushing their teeth. My smile has made children cry in fear. It doesn’t feel great.

I want to know what it’s like to be able to just grin at someone without feeling the pang of knowing how ugly your smile is. I want to smile with confidence. I want to know what it’s like to eat without pain before I die. I want people to see ME for once, not my teeth.

My best hope at this point is a procedure called All On X, which is a set of permanent dentures that attach to implants in your mouth. This is a $50,000-$60,000 procedure in the United States, which is an astronomical amount of money I will never, ever see. Fortunately, you can get the same procedure outside the US for a fraction of the cost, from equally if not more skilled dentists. Costa Rica, for example, would cost around $25,000, which includes the airfare, transportation, lodging, AND dental work—hence this fundraiser.

I am at the point where I can’t live like this anymore because it’s actively killing me. I need teeth, and since late-stage capitalism and the greed of the dental industry do not actually care about the health of their patients, I am willing to leave to find care elsewhere. I have been in contact with Meza Dental Care in San José, Costa Rica, and according to Dr. Meza, I am a good candidate for All On X. I would fly down to have most of my remaining teeth pulled, the implants placed, and a temporary set of dentures installed to allow me to heal without having to be toothless. After six months of healing, I would return to Costa Rica for my final, permanent dentures.

If you made it this far, bless you. I will continue to upload more information as I obtain it—for one thing, I have the estimates for care by local dentists, I have photos, x-rays, and coming soon: video. I will also interview my friends so you can get an idea of who I am as an individual, in the interest of full transparency. If this fundraiser is successful, I will then use it to document my dental journey and provide receipts as the work is completed.

This fundraiser is my only hope to put an end to forty years of suffering, humiliation, and pain. Any help you can give is appreciated. Please spread the word, share far and wide.

Thank you for reading, I love you, and be sure to get in some good trouble.