I'm gonna go with elegant statement of trufax instead of "FUCK FUCK OW PAPERCUT!"

Have you tried the dental school, quester?

I think Ginger's advice is the best right now. Especially since I think you need that tooth looked at and taken care of ASAP.

I used the dental school in Kansas City so I have some experience with that. but the U of Iowa is at least 35 miles away and school appointments usually take longer than office appointments. This is a problem because I am a temp and the management is not very tolerant of long breaks in a workday. If I lived in Iowa City that would be different. But, it's a long trip though open country from where I live and work. That's why I haven't tried it here.

Paper cuts, paper board cuts, poster board cuts are all of the VERY BAD! I have some experience with these!

manila folder cuts.

Gah. Those are the worst, Connie. I remember picking up a stack of folders and having the whole stack slide out from my hands en masse. That hurt.

quester,

there may be some dental places around you that can offer low cost services and/or payment plans. That's a big roundtrip to IA City.

I'm seeing a kung fu action movie, where one person threatens "The death of a thousand cuts!" while brandishing their sword. And the other one threatens "The death of a thousand paper cuts!" while brandishing a manila folder. See who cringes.

there may be some dental places around you that can offer low cost services and/or payment plans. That's a big roundtrip to IA City.

That's why I'm looking at the different possibilities of Insurance vs discount plan.

Thanks to our governor, Iowa is less poor friendly these days. *grumble*

One difference that I know there is in having dental insurance over not having any insurance (and I suspect this applies to discount programs) when I had an abscessed wisdom tooth so bad I could barely speak and could not open my mouth for them to get the bite-wing thingy in to take an x-ray, the dentist himself looked at which insurance plan I had, called an oral surgeon buddy of his and said, "You're still part of the ____ insurance network, right? Good. Got an opening today? No, but you do tomorrow morning? Perfect. She'll be there, and I'll get her started on antibiotics and pain meds." Then turned to me and gave me driving directions and scripts.

The year before, my mother had no insurance - and an abscessed wisdom tooth so bad that her dentist (who had been our family dentist for years, saw me when I was a kid, etc.) said he wasn't willing to try to get it out for her. Mom, in her painful state had to do all her calling around. It took her a couple of weeks to find a clinic that worked on a sliding scale and had an oral surgeon.

quester, have you tried calling the Iowa Dental Association? They should have a list of places that offer free or reduced cost dental care. Most state dental associations do. Although it will probably a long wait for an appointment or take a long time.

Sometimes individual dentists have their own financiing/payment options, they usually advertise those in the yellow pages.

So I found out why I wasn't getting hot water in the tub - I kept turning on the cold water tap thinking it was the hot one.

In my defence when I turned on the actual hot water tap there wasn't hot water coming out of it the other day.

Also the hot water heater was set on the lowest setting and has now been moved up a notch so hopefully I'll have hot water all the time and not occasionally luke warm water.

As for the kid thing, I've gotten the "oh but you'll regret it!" line before. My reply to that is, I'd rather be at the end of my life and regret not having children then having children and regretting and resenting them.