← Shannon Cason's Homemade
Shannon Cason's Homemade
Surviving Free Dental Care
00:13:14
A nerve-wracking trip to the School of Dentistry for free dental care. Unfortunately, sometimes, the uninsured have to play the test dummy.
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Shannon Cason
Before we start, you want to learn to tell better stories? Get my 10 Rules of Storytelling free when you sign up for my newsletter@shannon kayson.com and I send pretty good newsletters too, so sign up. Welcome to Homemade. I'm Shannon Cason. You ever feel like a guinea pig to someone learning? You ever had to beat a practice dummy? Tell me your story on Instagram. I'm Shannon Kayson. It's a story of the have and the have nots when you don't have you at the mercy of the circumstances. My priority has always been prevention, especially now more than ever. Better to save and invest than spend. Better to work out and stretch now than be in pain later. Better to brush my teeth than. Well, brushing your teeth should be a standard practice. Who doesn't brush their teeth? A lot of people don't though. I mean, you can smell it. What do you think about all the veneers that we see nowadays? I don't really have an issue with it, but some of them just look unnatural. They look like porcelain grills. Back in the 90s they used to have gold grills like Wu Tang and different artists used to get the gold grills. But now it's like porcelain Chiclet grills. People had these big old teeth in their mouth. Okay, well, this is my uninsured dental story. I hope you enjoy. I went to the dentist, not the dentist office, but to the University of Illinois at Chicago's School of Dentistry Urgent Care Clinic. It's where the poor and uninsured can go and get dental care. And at that moment in time, I was both and I had a toothache. This is where students, future dentists, can practice in your mouth. So it's like a beauty or a barber college, only it's your mouth. The way the process works, they don't take walk ins. You have to call Monday through Friday between the times 8:30 and 9:30 for an appointment the following business day. I had Thursday off work, so I called Wednesday morning and if you get through, you can see one of the student dentists the next day. If you don't, well, just endure the pain until the next time you can get through where there's always whiskey and pliers. I started calling at 8:25 and I called a total of 129 times. I was so excited when someone answered. I felt like I had just won concert tickets. The next day, after several hours of registration, I was showed to a waiting area to wait a couple hours. There are rolls and chairs in a big hallway and chairs filled with broke, uninsured college students, broke uninsured immigrant families, broke uninsured middle aged adults, and broke uninsured elderly people, all who share one common thread, a toothache. After a few more hours, a young man came out and called my name. Shannon Cason. I got up, walked over, shook his hand. Hello, Mr. Cason. My name is Mike. I doubted the formality was needed with my name if I wasn't calling him doctor. And I said, just Shannon. Mike showed me to a dental chair in a large room full of other dental chairs and small cubicles, many of them filled with people who I just saw in the waiting area, all laying on their backs with their mouths opened and their butts clenched. At our chair, Mike introduced me to another smiling kid. The kid said, hello, Mr. Cason. I'm Chris. I'll be performing your extraction and Mike here will be assistant. I shook his hand and smiled. Thanks, just Shannon. I sat in the chair as Chris and Mike studied my X rays. I overheard them discussing how the roots of my tooth were long and twisted and it wasn't going to be a simple pull. They used words like mesial and distal and how they would need to drill it in pieces to remove it. Then I tried not to listen anymore. As a writer, words are very visual to me. I can handle the drill, but I don't want to hear about the slicing, cutting, drilling and pulling referring to work to be done inside my mouth. I'd rather it just be done without my literal knowledge. Then Chris turned to me and said, Mr. Cason, I mean Shannon. We're going to extract your tooth because it's not salvageable. And if you look here on the X ray, it has deep roots. And if you see here, the roots are twisted in a way that we're going to have to slice the tooth in the sections, but by drilling it in half and cutting away some of the bone. A man in a white coat walked into the cube. He introduced himself as Dr. Parsons. Finally, Chris explained to the doctor for a third time in my earshot how he was going to slice, drill, cut, and then pull. And the doctor affirmed it. Slice, drill, cut, and then pull. And the doctor turned to me and asked if they had explained the procedure. I nodded vigorously. Okay, while I'm nodding vigorously, it brings to mind a new habit that I've incorporated into my daily routine to maintain my focus. I'm going to take a break from the story to tell you about it. It's called mental wealth investing in your mind. Mental wealth is sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and whatever healthy boost you can take to incorporate. And recently I've been using Magic Mind performance shots. I get Magic Mind in a month supply right at my doorstep. So I can easily incorporate the performance shots into my daily routine. I'm gonna drink one right now. You hear the little click? Tastes pretty good too. I've been using Magic Mind performance shots as part of my morning writing routine and it's made a noticeable difference in my focus. And at night I take the sleep shots and they help me wind down. Sleep is important to mental focus too, so if you want to build up your mental wealth like me, try out Magic Mind right now. On your first order. You get the 24 hour pack, the performance, and the sleep shots bundled at 45% off with my code. It's a good deal. To start the process, just use my code. Magic mind.com backslash homemade J A N. That's magic mind.com backslash Homemade J A N. Okay, back to the dentist. Then something happened and Chris asked Mike if he was ready. Mike seemed to get nervous and said, yeah, like he really wasn't ready for whatever it is he was going to do. My internal dialogue got in on the conversation, saying, maybe Mike isn't ready, Chris. Chris ignored my thought, looked up and called the doctor back, who had walked away to check on other student doctors. Mike walked to the table with the insureness and lack of confidence that made me more nervous than I already was sitting in a dentist chair at a school for dentistry. The doctor returned and Mike fiddled on the table and picked up a long cotton swab. And the doctor said, what's that? And Mike said it was the topical numbing gel. And the doctor quickly dismissed it, saying, I don't use that in my office. He's a big boy. Pat me on the shoulder. It's just going to be a little pinch. My internal dialogue was trying to explain to the doctor that I didn't want to prove my grit in a dentist chair. I opened my mouth. It's unsettling to be in a dentist chair while my internal dialogue is cheering on some kid with a needle in my mouth. You can do it, man. You got this, Mike. And he did it. It was just a little pinch for the actual procedure. Here's the setup. Chris with the drill and knife and Mike with the water pick and suction tube. The doctor bouncing in and out of the cubicle to CH and other students and me with my mouth open and my ass clenched. They got started. Chris was slicing, cutting, drilling and pulling. And Mike was squirting and sucking. That doesn't sound right, but Mike still seemed nervous. At one point he put the suction tube too far down on the top of my tongue and caused me to gag. He apologized and I said he removed all the tubes and I repeated, now I know how she feels. He got the biggest laugh from that and it loosened him up some. Then Chris was having trouble with the pulling part. Dr. Parsons came over to give it a try. No go, he instructed Chris, slice, cut and drill a little more and Chris did it and it still wouldn't give. The doctor tried again. My tooth root was twisted in some Chinese origami brain tease puzzle that Chris and the doctor couldn't figure out. Then Mike woke up from all the squirting and sucking and said, maybe if you pull it that way, eureka. It came out. It took him a long time to get that tooth out. I spent most of the day at the UIC School of Dentistry. When I was walking out, all the cubicles were empty. All the student doctors had gathered their coats to leave. The waiting area was just rows of empty chairs and I waited on the Pink Line platform for the train and I saw Mike coming up the steps to wait also. I said, thanks Mike. He said, shannon, you were a great patient. I asked him if it was his first time, you know, giving the needle. He said no. He had done it a bunch of times with the dummies, but it was his first time with a real human head. I told him no, next time will be his first time. But he did really well on his last dummy. Thanks for listening. Shannon Kasin's Homemade is proud to be supported by the Friends of Homemade. I want to thank everyone who listens, enjoys and supports the stories. To my Patreon friends. Dana H. In Seattle, Washington, thank you for joining the Patreon. Nino B. In Somerville, South Carolina thank you for continuing to support the Patreon. To my best friends, Angela B. My fellow Michigander. It's pretty cold out here now. Thank you for joining the Patreon and everyone who sends kind words on my recent newsletter. Bill B. Kevin R. Sabrina R.A. amina in New York. Follow the newsletter at shannoncasen.com Homemade is a friend funded podcast. Visit patreon.com Shannon Casen or $sign Shannon Casen on Cash app if you like to go the direct route. I always appreciate the direct route too. You just don't know. All right, I appreciate you. This episode was produced at home by me, Shannon Casen. Subscribe to Shannon Kaysen on YouTube. This story is also available on YouTube right now. See me tell the story. Consider supporting the stories@patreon.com or cash app $shannon casen be a friend of the store and for more information about workshops and speaking engagements, go to shannoncasen.com I have some new shows coming up too. I'll tell you more about them soon, and the intro and outro music is produced by echo Finch. Visit echofinch.com to learn more and be sure to grab some magic Mind using my code magicmind.comhomemadejan and keep coming back for more and more stories. Please share Homemade to someone you think will enjoy the show. I appreciate that and I'll talk to you soon. Now that's homemade.