How to Care for Your Teeth in 14 Easy Steps

1. Check up

2. Panic

3. Fillings!
     A. One happy, easy filling
     B. Two temporary fillings--teeth drilled and filled with antibiotic, then filled (for now).

4. More panic! Because what if the antibiotic-filled teeth are WORSE than the dentist thinks? What if HE HAS TO TAKE THEM AWAY FOREVER AND YOU CAN NEVER EAT BREAD AGAIN?

5. Guilt, because tooth care was so expensive, you could not afford to treat your asthma and your various other diseases AND care for your teeth, so now you must suffer (from both at the same time and from poverty)

6. Shame, because you are such a wimp, you are allowing yourself to be tormented by teeth (and poverty)

7. Rage, because your old dentist sucked so badly, the work he did went wrong, leading you to the current state of affairs. No new bad teeth exist, only OLD bad teeth, with fillings that went bad. Stupid Old Dentist.

8. Repeat steps 4-7

9. Fix other tooth (after dentist's vacation)

10. More x-rays! Fix temporary fillings--after antibiotics stew under the temporary fillings for 6 weeks.

11. Teeth cleaning. And poverty.

12. Did I mention poverty? Because there will be a lot of that. A LOT. Because no dental insurance. Why would you have that?

13. Meanwhile, consider that two hugely important chunks of your body aren't covered by standard health insurance--if you have health insurance, your eyes aren't covered and your teeth aren't covered. Your ears might not even be covered, if you have hearing loss and want a hearing aid. Never mind that the health of those parts of you can have a massive impact on the other parts of you. I mean, can you imagine if your health insurance company decided not to cover your heart, or your lungs? Would you go for that? That's basically what they're doing with eyes and teeth...and they're getting away with it. This sucks.

14. Repeat steps 4-7 a few more times

15. Repeat all steps that apply annually. For the rest of your life, or until your teeth are all removed and replaced by bionic teeth that can cut through steel and have a half-life of 700 years. Yes, they are radioactive. Did you imagine bionic teeth wouldn't be?

Guess which parts of this list are happening to me RIGHT NOW? Really. Guess.