The Teeth Saga

The first time my husband told me about his teeth problems it was only a few weeks into our relationship, I felt so bad for him. He was in so much pain, and it was a pain I had never experienced so I couldn't really comprehend how terrible he felt. 

He had been at work all day, and I was still in my hometown. We were struggling to make a long distance relationship work while I wrapped up my business in a salon and was transitioning to an executive assistant position with a talent agent. The job would allow me to move to the city and be with him full time. 

I was working at the salon when I got a phone call from him and he sounded terrible. I could hear the pain in his voice. What came next should have been a massive red flag but I just took it for what it was and a way for him to not be in pain. You see when I met my husband he was pretty terrible with money and his paycheck was often spent before he even got it, so he was calling me on this day to ask me to send him money so he could buy cocaine and use it to numb the pain of his teeth so he could get some sleep. We'd use drugs together quite a few times at this point so it wasn't really a big shock, but I still still should have taken it for the red flag that it was. The next day was my normal day to come into the city and spend the weekend with him. I had a slower day at the salon so I was able to catch an early ferry and actually got to the place he was renting a room in early. I decided to be nice and put some laundry on, something I have never been very good at nor enjoy doing, so when the first load came out of the dryer and a bunch of things fell out, obviously that had been in a pocket, I wasn't really surprised. I was surprised by what the items were though. 2 small cut plastic straws used as a snort tube for nasally ingesting drugs fell out. I didn't really find it all that strange, but it hadn't dawned on me that I was washing his work clothes not our going out clothes.

I really loved this stage of our relationship, I couldn't wait to see him and he treated me like his queen. He wasn't spoiling me or buying me anything or things like that he was just genuinely happy to be around me, he would tell me I was beautiful and make me feel loved.

 The next morning I was putting on more laundry and I remembered to check his pockets this time and I found a small plastic baggie that contained another plastic snort tube and some powder. I had done enough drugs in my life at this point to know it wasn't cocaine in the bag. I took my findings and walked into his room and placed them on the bed in front of him. "what's this?" I asked him 

"Oh that's K's, he said he asked me to hold it when he was talking to the boss yesterday" he said it to me without skipping a beat so I had no reason to think it wasn't true. We had a really great day together not doing anything special just being together. Later in the evening we were laying in bed together when K knocked on the door to see if Aaron wanted some side work the next morning, moving furniture. He agreed and shortly after we went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night and he wasn't laying next to me, which was super alarming. He knew how upsetting it would be for me because of my past relationship and he never did things like this. I stumbled my way through the dark unfamiliar house and found him on the balcony, smoking a cigarette. As I got closer I could see that his eyes were red and tears were streaming down his face. I crouch down to where he was sitting so that we were face to face, I reached up and touched his cheek. "What's wrong, my love?" I asked. He told me that his teeth were really hurting and that he'd been up most of the night. I asked him what he wanted to do. Did he want to go to the hospital? Was he still going to go to work with K? He said he had made a commitment and he was going to go to work. This is one of the things that I loved the most about my husband and one of the biggest things I took from our relationship, because I had a habit of calling and sick and not being places when I said I would be before I met him. So I sat there with him until it was time to get ready, I made us some coffee and then I drove them to their job. I dropped them off and decided I was just going to explore the area. They weren't going to be all day and it was just easier to stay close. I hadn't been gone 15 minutes when Aaron called and asked me to come back and get him.

 When I got there I went back to where they were working and noticed a pile of Aaron's things, included in these things was a small baggie with powder in it and a plastic snort tube. I thought it was strange but I knew enough to know that he didn't want it sitting out in the open, so I quickly grabbed it and threw it in my purse. Aaron finished loading the piece of furniture he was working on and told K that we were going to the hospital. The pain was unbearable.

 Knowing what I know now, I should have taken what was about to unfold in front of me as my exit strategy. But alas I thought I was good for him, I thought that we could get through anything together. We didn't have to wait long at the emergency room before getting seen which was shocking because this is not how our hospitals normally work. I asked Aaron if he wanted me to go with him and he said yes. 

We followed the nurse into the first triage. The nurse started asking the standard questions, why we were there etc.  He explained about his teeth and she asked to have a look, at this point I had not seen inside his mouth nor did I understand the extent of the damage and decay that was in there. She was quite taken back when she first looked in his mouth and I heard her say "oh so there's _____ use?"

 I missed what she was talking about, I didn't hear the word that she said but I could tell that Aaron heard her "mostly when I was younger" he said to her. She said there wasn't much she could do for him that he needed to go and see a dentist but seeing his how it was a weekend and later in the day she would give him a prescription for t3's and antibiotics. We gathered our things and went to the truck. We are driving back to Aaron's place, it was such a quiet ride but I didn't really think anything of it until Aaron let out the biggest breath "can you say something???" he blurted out "I'm terrified right now, terrified you're going to leave me." I turned and looked at him I'm sure with the most puzzled look on my face "what are you talking about?"

 "what the nurse asked me"

" Oh " I said "I didn't hear everything she asked you, why what did she ask you?" Now I could see the terror in his face and the color slowly drain "she asked me about meth use."

 And just like that a light bulb went off. The wheels started turning in my head and aligning all the dots, seeing the correlation between the last couple days events, the baggie and his pockets, The stuff I had just found where he was working, his teeth. I assured him I wasn't going to leave him but that we should probably have a conversation about it. And that's what we did. We had an open and honest conversation about it.

 It would be a couple of months before his teeth would become a problem again. We had moved in together at this point and we're settling into our new place. When BAM out of nowhere he was in agony, it was so hard to watch the person you care for most in the world in the worst physical pain and you can do nothing to take it away. I remember the pain was so bad that in the middle of the night I convinced him to let me take him to the emergency room. Since it was the middle of the night we went to the hospital closest to our house, what a big mistake. The weight was long and the people in the waiting room were interesting to say the least. With it being one of the busiest ERs in our province it wasn't surprising the lack of care and compassion we received. When we were finally taken back to see the resident on duty there were no pre-questions, just sit here and wait. It was obvious that Aaron was in pain, but everyone just zoomed past him ignoring him almost. Finally the ER doctor came to see us, he looked at Aaron's chart "so why are you here tonight"  he asked 

"well Aaron is in a great deal of pain" I replied 

"says here it's teeth pain, have you seen a dentist?"

" Yes I've seen a dentist I can't afford what they're asking" Aaron snapped at him. "It's infected all I need is some antibiotics to clear the infection" he added  Nope they wouldn't do it, not even antibiotics. I could understand if he was asking for heavy duty pain medication them saying no, but he was in a great deal of pain and he just wanted antibiotics to clear the infection. and they couldn't be bothered to give that to him. So we left no better than when we arrived and Aaron was in a mood, and taking it out on me. Part of me didn't blame him, tooth pain is the worst, but part of me knew that it didn't excuse the way he was talking to me and treating me at the time. The next day we scrounged up enough money to go and have an initial appointment with a dentist. I insisted on this so I could see what the actual cost was going to be, up until this point I had only been going off of Aaron's inflated story.

There never seem to be enough money between Aaron and I. At this time I was working for the talent agent and was making roughly $2,400 every two weeks and Aaron was a garbage man making $1,600 every two weeks, plus we had just started working for my friend for her business.

 This first dentist we saw was absurd in their pricing and didn't give us the real picture of what needed to be done. It wasn't until Right before our home was raided by police (but that's a story for another time) that we got the clearest picture of what we were looking at. Aaron needed to have 15 teeth removed and would need a full set of dentures. Wouldn't you know this first dentist had a denturist attached to their practice and quoted the whole job around $5,000. It would span several months as they would only take two teeth at a time. It seemed almost undoable, but we set to figuring out how to pay for it and then covid hit and with it any ability to see a dentist.

 Shortly after covid we were raided by Delta police so Aaron's teeth unfortunately took the back burner. Fast forward 6 or so months as we were preparing to move out of the moldy, scam rental we had moved into after being evicted from the raid. Aaron was having another flare up with his teeth and subsequently making my life miserable. I decided to do some recon and call around, there had to be other denturists, there had to be a cheaper way to get this done.

 I found myself on the phone with the most pleasant receptionist that explained to me that they worked with a dentist locally that had hospital privileges, meaning that all of the extractions would get done at one time and that the cost would be covered by our BC medical!!!!! So not only were their dentures a fraction of the cost but she just saved us $3,000 on dentist bills. I made an appointment for Aaron at both places and I waited for him to wake up so I could tell him the good news. He was not as excited as I had hoped he would be, typical Aaron doom and gloom. He had both his appointments and everything was exactly as the receptionist said. BC medical would cover the extractions, he needed to see a general practitioner first and they would fill out some paperwork and then we could get him scheduled in. There always seemed to be some reason that we couldn't move forward and 90% of the time the excuse was me. I spent the money, I caused it so that we couldn't afford it that month, I didn't go and get a job to pay for his teeth. Here I had taken my time and made the effort, something that no other woman in his life had done. He had been suffering with these teeth issues for long before he met me. I had cut our bill more than in half and it still wasn't good enough for him. He would go on to tell me I did absolutely nothing to help fix the problem with his teeth. That I didn't care enough about his life to make sure that it got done, because having infections in your teeth has been a direct link to heart attack and heart disease. Something we were both aware of. I felt like it didn't matter what I did it wasn't good enough. I had quiet a bit of resentment about the whole situation, here he was saying I didn't care enough about weather he lived or died but yet he was doing nothing about the situation himself. I had gotten further and done more about it than anyone including himself but yet I was secretly expected to do literally everything for him.

  A couple of months before our final big blowout of a breakup I had packed my stuff and actually left the house, I thought I was finally gone. That I would finally start to move on, but I loved my husband more than anything in the world and when I said I do I meant forever. I decided to put everything I had in and give it one last shot. I went out and got two full-time jobs and a part-time job. I was working at a storage facility from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday to Friday I was working for a commercial janitorial company from 4:30 p.m. until around 1:30 a.m. and three days a week I had a side gig cleaning a keg restaurant. So on the overlapping days which was twice a week I was literally working 22-hour days. I knew that this was not something I could do for a long time, but I'd hoped that if I could stick it out for 6 months I could get us caught up on bills and I could pay for his teeth to be fixed once and for all. Aaron had decided that I did this so that I could leave him and afford to live on my own, something that literally to this day he still believes. To be honest I can see how he'd think that as our lives were terrible together but I hoped that if I could pull it off he would finally see how much he meant to me and that all I wanted to do was save my husband and save my family. Unfortunately like so many other situations with him, I was demonized and gaslit into believing that what I was doing wasn't enough. That I didn't love him enough to save him, even though I was doing everything I could to make it happen.