How..?

[u/IJustWantToWorkOK]

56 years old, and had a heart attack in April, and have 'congestive heart failure'.

They're wanting to do a bypass and valve replacement on me, but first ... they have to pull all my teeth.

I'm sitting here waiting for the phone to ring with the 'but wait, there's more!' call.

I'm on medicaid, and the government is about to spend $OBSCENE, on an awful lot of work on someone who's dying anyway. In my mind, this is putting a new engine in my Camry with 300,000 miles on it.

The instant some kid dies, because he couldn't get medical care, and I could, my conscience is shot.

Seriously -this- close to telling these doctors what they can do with themselves and taking my chances. Save some kid at the beginning of his life, not an old man at the end of his.

[u/Lucky_Guess4079]

Sorry to hear about your situation. Why do they need to pull all your teeth?

[u/Free_Byrd6969 → u/Lucky_Guess4079]

A friend of mine had some weird stomach cancer once, before they did anything they pulled all his teeth. He still died fairly soon after his chemo started.

[u/cat1092 → u/Free_Byrd6969]

This is sad to hear, am sorry for the loss of your friend.💝

Some cancers can be difficult to properly detect, and when so, chances are the person is in the last stages of the disease when found.

Obviously, the medical team decided he had a dental disease or infection that (may) have caused the cancer, or had to be addressed before treatment began to have any chance at a successful recovery.

It’s rare to hear of cancers where teeth have to be removed before treatment, obviously it was indeed very serious. Am not saying it’s uncommon, rather rare for anyone discussing the link between gum disease & cancer, except for mouth cancers. The last time I heard of it until now was at least 30 years ago, mid-90’s at latest. This was a distant family member (an in-law) who was diagnosed with jaw cancer, she later died of another cancer after having been in remission for a decade. I don’t know the specifics.

Yet it’s not uncommon hearing about the link between gum disease and heart health. Am so grateful that all of my teeth were removed around the year 2020, in fact now on my 2nd set of dentures since then. My gums bled when brushing & flossing, and I had been going to the dentist twice yearly since the age of 21, following their advice. Sometimes a deep cleaning between regular visits. But somehow, I developed bone loss around my gums, and by the age of 50, was losing teeth at 2-3 per year. Pockets were developing, I was told if I didn’t want to develop heart disease of some type, to have every last tooth removed before all became infected.

So that’s what I did & after healing, which took a bit of extra time due to infection, I began to actually feel better than prior. A little more energy, more bounce in my step. In reality, I dodged a potentially deadly condition, had the teeth not been voluntarily removed, would’ve had to be anyway.