Teeth and Ants

Before I became a Vista, I naively hoped that the health benefits provided to us would include dental care. Thus, I put off getting my teeth cleaned and checked until when I thought my time of lacking insurance would be over.

At this point I haven't been to the dentist in a while, so when I recently read an article called A survival guide for the uninsured (containing such cheerful news as "The more than 45 million Americans without coverage will get sick more, earn less and die earlier than those with insurance") the best piece of info I got from it was the idea to try to find cheap dental care at dental schools.

I'd heard of people doing that before but hadn't occurred to me lately. It seemed like a good plan. Unfortunately, apparently lots of others think so too. The only dental school in my state takes new patients through a long process which involves being selected through a monthly lottery, being screened via form answers to see if there is a current educational need for you, being placed on a waiting list for up to 6 months, and finally being given a screening appointment to see if they want to work with you. All that for low-cost dental care with people who aren't even dentists yet.

But maybe you'll have better luck - here's a list of dental schools.

In other news, my office has ants. They seem to have formed a colony or something in my trash can. Maybe this'll teach me to take out the trash more than never.

Comment from Aliya Abbasi on November 3, 2006 - 6:17pm

wonderful entry... i love your paragraph on the requirements listing.