Posted on 12/24/2007 7:18:58 PM PST by neverdem
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect.
He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers and a swig of peroxide.
He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.
But mostly he has seen everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking.
Dr. Smith has a rare window on a state with the highest proportion of adults under 65 without teeth, where about half the population does not have dental insurance. He struggles to counter the effects of the drastic shortage of dentists in rural areas and oral hygiene habits that have been slow to change.
“The level of need is hard to believe until you see it up close,” said Dr. Smith, who runs a free dental clinic at a high school in one of Kentucky’s poorest counties. He also provides free care to about half of the patients who visit his private practice in Barbourville.
Kentucky is among the worst states nationally in the proportion of low-income residents served by free or subsidized dental clinics, and less...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Covington makes Newport look like Beverly Hills. Both are superior to Cincy, however.
lol! Not even Arkansas wants to claim her!
“P.S. You’ll be happy yo know that I have all of my teeth, too, LOL!
Laughing too.
Yes we are lucky, and I am very proud of my grandparents and parents, the hard work, sacrifices they made. We have a lot in common, including teeth (grin).
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