Funny you should mention it. I'm just coming out of four weeks of dental hell, which was finally resolved with surgery a week ago. I can honestly say that I read "Where There is No Dentist" and took out the dental emergency kit we keep in the big family FAK. I am terrified of the dentist office and everything related to it, so considered trying the temp fillings and stuff rather than spend the hours and $1500 it ended up costing us. (Hoping to recoop from the insurance company. Fingers crossed.) I did try the clove oil remedy I read about while I was waiting though.

I couldn't have bugged out if I wanted to. I couldn't even do the groceries on the end. Heck just helping with math homework or calming a crying baby got to be too much.

I have to admit, the pain before the surgery rivaled labour. I do not recommend it.

What can you do with the kit? I know about clove oil, but it seems you might as well get a prescription painkiller. What does the cement do? Don't you need to clean the cavity before filling it, in order to stop the pain?

Bing, my little kit has some cleaning/drying stuff, emergency fillings and also a little vial with something in it for a knocked out/broken tooth. It also came with some asa or something. I used to be an Athletic Therapist, working with hockey and football teams so it seemed prudent to carry it at the tkme,. For personal use, just call the dentist, except when, like us in a couple of weeks, you don't have insurance. The price tag of that will make anyone pause. Trust me though, if you can afford, get it taken care of properly.

I know this is drifting off topic; isn't the best way to prepare for financial ills is to be financially prepared?

Jeanette Isabelle

This may be the only thing we can do if we want to prepare for a really bad situation where medical care is really, really expensive. After all, how much can we do for ourselves anyway? Can we give ourselves root canals? If we have to do DIY dentistry, how about DIY open heart surgery?

In a prolonged TEOTWAWKI situation, I guess we'll just endure the pain, lose our teeth, die of heart attack, etc., like our ancestors did. Modern medicine requires a huge supporting industry in order to work. It's not just some guy with a box of herbs.

If Franklin isn't worth the paper he's printed on, barter. The dentist then barters to have more dental supplies to use.

This may not be easy but is it doable?

Jeanette Isabelle

I have been doing my own periodontal scaling since 2006. Because of severe periodontal disease and lack of funds. Successfully keeping almost all my teeth in my mouth against all odds. Except one gone, plus a few highly likely goners that are still surviving and which I may be lucky enough to heal someday. Or which will lose but just not today. Or real real soon.

Including - periodontal abscess curettage - which is a real tooth killer and people killer too. I have a webpage and YouTube videos. I am easy to find because I am the only person posting such information. Just search for relevant terms or find - diy perio.

The strategy is - progressive periodontal debridement - Not for the faint of heart. Lots of blood and scary stuff. Lots of twists and turns and confusion. Plus dumb dangerous moves. But ultimately doable. And not as dangerous as it may sound. Maybe not really very dangerous at all. If you don't do anything real stupid.

If things are very severe then takes lots of time. Like maybe even 10-40 or more hours per tooth. Plus months and months of activity, recovery, healing and more activity.

If things are not so bad then it isn't that difficult. 20-40 hours of quality time could just do the trick to reverse the progress of the infection. If not so severe. Plus gain a lifetime survival skill.

Realistically need quite a lot of good curettes. But can do a lot with just the Langer 1-2 Extended Access Mini. Plus the PDT Mini-me (Langer 5-6 straight curette plus straight sickle). Plus possibly the PDT Montana Jack. Which is an offset sickle.

Just figure that dental hygienists are high school graduates and only have a few months training doing the actual scaling. Regular people can do the same and get the general hang of it within 10-20 hours of trial and error. Can also practice on domestic animals, like dogs and cats. The principles are the same.

Also includes some difficult to understand esoteric stuff. But only if the disease is very very severe and you are dealing with goners anyway. Otherwise it is fairly straightforward. Clean and heal.

I have also been nursing a cavity without filling it in because tooth already has too many fillings and is too delicate to drill. Along with being periodontally compromised.

Trick to cavities is to first clean out the crud with an explorer and keep your fingers crossed you don't hit the nerve! Then get the narrowest available Sugarman File to open up the top. But stay away from any cusps. Then use toothpick to polish. Peroxide to debride. Iodine to disinfect. A&H Whitening Booster to remineralize. Or equivilent. Like Novamon or liquid calcium.

Eventually the fibroblasts inside of the tooth will form a hardened layer that is semi-permanent. Except for any gaps. Not the ideal, but doable. Filling it in in another matter. Which I don't see any good materials except for gold. Which is expensive and hard to work with.

On the short term can use tooth varnish, like Copalite. After the months and months of fibroblast hygiene and healing.

But otherwise most filling materials are problematic. Namely they shrink and then leave a gap for bacteria to creep in. Plus moisture hurts the curing. Plus thickness hurts the curing. Etc. No easy answers. Maybe keeping it open with Copalite is best. Or to build up the Copalite slowly, with like 50 layers? Who knows? I sure don't.

I guess Tommie can open up shop when SHTF. Seriously, they should have dental emergencies on the Walking Dead to make it more realistic. It's not just all sawing limbs and delivering babies, you know.

Sorry you've had to do your own dental stuff. It shouldn't happen, this day and age.

It's a labor issue. Nobody has figured out any reasonable cost-effective ways to clean the crud out from down below if the teeth go south. Plus implants are so great anyway who needs their original teeth anyway?

DIY Perio makes up for this with sweat equity. Turning into rent-a-tooth at some point to keep them from falling out. Plus fingers crossed.

Periodontal abscesses raise the level of honesty significantly. Turning it into a sort of cage-wrestling match where you can cry uncle anytime and just get the tooth pulled.

But otherwise if you can catch it before it gets too bad then can end up with teeth that aren't so bad after all.

The expensive stuff seems to involve desperate rearguard actions to salvage damaged teeth with good cosmetic result. The old approach-simple extraction-remains a less-expensive alternative compared to root canal, extraction/bone graft/implant. That leaves one with a sub-optimal smile, but does simplify flossing, and minimizes unwanted attention from the opposite gender, while having only limited impact on nutrition, based upon empiric observation of chubby, toothless folk in various rural healthcare settings.

The other issue is the impact of dental health on general health, synopsized here, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.