Grimm Popcorn Breaks Tooth

Was chomping some microwave popcorn I got at the Grocery Outlet for $.33.  You think that's cheap?

That popcorn was highly expensive.

I was engrossed in Grimm, which is filmed in Portland, and quite witty, I think.  And eating the popcorn.

It wasn't fully popped.  Bad omen.

Suddenly I bit down on an unpopped kernal and felt something give in my mouth.  It was half a tooth giving way.  The half was kind of hanging, attached still up under my gum.  I pulled it out.

The tooth broke at the filling, leaving exposed amalgam, although some detached with the outer shell of the outside of my tooth, also.  That expose amalgam will chip off.

I don't have a dentist.

My dentist retired.  I'm on ODS plan with OHP (Oregon Health Plan).  When I asked for a list of alternate dentists in the area, I was given quite a few names but most had the same two numbers after them.  Those numbers turned out to be for the Boys and Girls clubs of Corvallis and Albany.  They hold free dental clinics now and then.  FOR KIDS!

The only other dentist in this area taking ODS OHP is Affordable, same two dentists, in Corvallis and Lebanon offices.  I had a terrible experience years ago with Affordable.  It was down right scary.  I will never go back.

So I'm up shit creek again, without that paddle I need. Still haven't found it.  Now with a broken half tooth stub in my mouth.  What to do.  I've been e-mailing area dentists asking if they take "the plan" but I know they don't already.  Nobody does.  I can switch to another plan, but I can't get a list of dentists taking new patients until I switch, I was told, and if they have no dentists in this area taking new patients, I can't switch plans for an entire year.  How nuts is that?  That's what I was told when I called the state line asking what to do now.

A broken off tooth likely would costs thousands these days, to crown, if there's enough left to crown.  We are talking thousands!!!

Or it could be pulled, the half tooth, plus the root stumps and then the one molar left up there will drift in my gums and have to be pulled too.  I'm on the way to toothlessness, due to inability to afford dental care or even find a dentist that will take OHP and the plan I have.  Gosh darn it all.