Maryland Boy Dies of a Toothache (and guess who is to blame)

PMSNBC ^ | 02/28/2007 | PMSNBC

[WV Mountain Mama]

I'm wondering if where they lived had fluoride in their water. I thought that was supposed to eradicate cavities.

I also wonder if they have PSP, video games, cable or satellite tv. In my experiences of teaching in a poor, rural school district, kids may have had rotten teeth, but they had quads, PSP, dish network and other high end hobbies while getting free lunches, etc.

[absolootezer0]

most hospitals will at least give you antibiotics and painkillers.

[montag813]

Don't rip some lady apart after her kid just died. If a kid needs help, a kid needs help. Regardless of status.

So why didn't she get him some? You call this a mother? She deserves all our scorn and then some.

[mywholebodyisaweapon]

That's interesting. My wife had a stroke after neglecting to get an abcessed tooth fixed. She actually had the stroke in the hospital while they goofed around. They finally discharged her, shocked that she couldn't walk. We should have sued their pants off, but the hospital serves a small community as a trauma center, so we didn't. Our dentist badgered my wife's doctor into prescribing some heavy antibiotics. After taking these, she improved immediately. I credit the dentist with saving her life.

Oddly enough, every M.D. involved denied that an abcessed tooth could affect the brain. They insisted that such an infection is encapsulted. I guess M.D.s admit such a possibility only when Bush can be blamed.

[NCLaw441]

If he had brushed his teeth...
If his mother had gotten a job...
If his parents had married...

[rabidralph]

They live in Prince George's Co., right outside DC. I'm sure she could have gone to Howard University's dental school and gotten his teeth repaired by the students for little or no cost. Some people refuse to help themselves.

[No.6]

No, you guys are missing the liberalogic(tm)! It's not about whether adequate common sense would have prevented the problem, or whether multiple redundant safety nets could have dealt with the tooth if Mom had only bothered.

As long as it's even *possible* for a parent to so neglect their child, government must expand. Only when every child is raised by the State will Utopia exist - and it'll be apparent Utopia because at that point the MSM will stop noticing and reporting the squalor.

We all know the technique: the homeless magically vaporize off the papers when a Democrat is in office, only to appear the day after a Republican's inauguration. Cuba's poor are non-persons in the media. And so forth.

[montag813]

The hospital said there was virtually nothing they could do for him, it was dental, not medical.

And so I assume you went to another dentist...? You let him suffer? Which is it? What's your point?

[Unassuaged]

I do not think the ER will pull a tooth. I would hope they could refer someone to a dentist immediately, or call one for you though.

[P-40]

How about if his mother had taken him to any dentist.

My dentist does his regular practice Monday through Thursday and does pro bono work on Friday. That is really generous but not all that uncommon. I've known plenty of dentists that will work with you...but you have to seek them out.

[WV Mountain Mama]

We have a friend who did that. He was an oops child and his parents were older and died while he was still in high school. He would go to the WVU school of dentistry for his dental care.

[Charles Martel]

Deamont's mother needs to get her priorites in life straight.

Hey, those gold tooth caps cost more than the average drill n' fill.

[NCLaw441]

You said: Why not just say a prayer of thanks that we don't live like that, and a prayer for peace for the boy's mother and his family?

Don't rip some lady apart after her kid just died.

If a kid needs help, a kid needs help. Regardless of status.
***

This is less a rip of the lady than it is of the media trying to place blame where it does not belong. I doubt if anyone in here would search this lady out and give her grief for her failure to save her son's life.

[HOTTIEBOY]

Because people like her live off of my taxdollars. She's just gonna have another kid, get more welfare, and complain more because the gubment is not doing enough to help her lazy butt.

I can remember a time when a woman would be under suspicion of child neglect if the kid's teeth were rotted out. But now the woman is the victim instead of the kid. She needs her uterus cut out is what she needs.

[Dante3]

If the mother had a cellphone or a TV or a car, she could have afforded the $80.

[HOTTIEBOY]

I knew it......

[LWalk18]

For some reason the lib media seems to think this story should justify national healthcare. Why, I don't know. After all, the same folks in charge of Medicaid will be in charge of nationalized healthcare. If anything, this story serves as a reminder as to why national healthcare would be a disaster.

Exactly- if there were less government benefits, maybe she would have been more resourceful. I had an abscessed tooth where the infection spread to my face and my dental insurance would not begin for a couple of weeks. I went to the ER and they were able to treat me with antibiotic right away, clearing up the inflection and giving me time to have the tooth removed when my insurance kicked in. They offered to bill me (I did have health insurance) so it seems to me that she could have done the same thing and then paid off the bill later, even she paid a little at a time. Instead she waited on the government, which means waiting on an inpersonal and bureaucratic process.

No doctor or dentist is going to let a child die because they don't have insurance.

[tsmith130]

That's lovely. Switch to decaf.

[ShadowDancer]

Nope, it was the weekend (this came on Friday night) and I tried every freaking place in the phone book I could find, even tried Michigan State's school of dentistry and couldn't get a hold of anyone to take him. Finally on late Sunday night I got a hold of our dentist and he called in an antiobiotic and pain meds to get him through til the morning. It was horrible.