Do you think the regime cares?

  There is trillions in unrealized money to the government.  The regime despises the middle class and wants that money.

Of course they don’t care, and the banks will pass the cost on to investors in the form of higher fees.  But that will affect all of us, not just those worth over $100 million. It’s another hidden cost to the middle class. A punishment for investing and trying to save for retirement.

We have been warned for a long time that the feds are eyeing that motherlode of wealth in the form of 401(k)s and IRAs. 

Ramsey doesn’t think this will pass.

https://www.ramseysolutions.com/taxes/unrealized-capital-gains-tax

Another possibility, which Rush alluded to, would be that the endodontist has access to a cone beam, which the GP usually does not.

I had to look that up and yes from the pictures that looks like what my endo had.

While we're talking about teeth and dentistry, late last year I went in for my cleaning. They took the traditional bite wing x-rays and then the dentist, new to this practice, came in. She told me I had an infection starting in #2 and needed to go see an Endodontist to get a root canal.  I go there, go through all kind of x-rays and the Endodontist comes in to tell me I don't need a root canal, here's a prescription for an antibiotic to stop the infection and your dentist need to pull the tooth. That was what I got for $400+. Says he'll send a report to the dentist office.  The tooth has a crown and he says the tooth is split under the crown.  I never heard from the dentist, the tooth has never bothered me. I think my cleaning comes up in May. Gonna thank them for costing me $400+.

Based on my experience last year, I think both of them might be right. You might have a small infection and an antibiotic is only a temporary solution.  The infection will recur because the pathway that allowed bacteria in is still there (the crack in the tooth).  No they will not do a root canal if the tooth is cracked and yes, you will ultimately need to get it pulled.

This is what I went though last year. Except I had pain in the tooth, and I’d already had a root canal. The dentist took an x-ray and showed me, it is a shadow representing a pocket of infection between the tooth root and the bone.  Your dentist should have pointed out something like that to you on the x-ray.

He gave me an antibiotic and sent me to the endodontist to drill through the crown and dig out the old root canal filler and directly inspect the infected pocket, then either redo the root canal or, if  the tooth is cracked, send me back to have the tooth pulled.  When I went in to the endodontist for that, I told her I was no longer in any pain so didn’t the antibiotic cure me? Now we don’t need to do anything?  That’s when she told me, no, it doesn’t really cure it, these things tend to come back.

She drilled through and when she got in she said, yep, there is a pocket of pus.  So she cleaned it out and packed it with antibiotic ointment and put a temporary filling in.  She told me she did see a crack so she wasn’t going to do another root canal repair, but I’d have to get it pulled.   As I recall she charged me exactly $400 also.  When I got back to the dentist and he pulled it, he did another thorough clean out before he put back that blood concoction.

Just because the tooth isn’t bothering you doesn’t mean all is well.  The infection is eating away at the bone under the tooth.  It will eventually start hurting, assuming you did have an infection and the antibiotic didn’t completely cure it, and I suspect that’s the case if your endodontist believed that was the case.  I expect when you go back to the dentist they’ll do another x-ray.  That should show if the pocket of suspected infection has gone away, stayed the same or gotten bigger.  You might have to ask if they even read the report from the endodontist, maybe they expected you to take the initiative and call them for the followup.

If they can show you that shadow on the imaging, might want to go ahead and do something rather than wait til it starts hurting.  When mine started hurting it went from zero to real bad pretty quickly.

About 20 years ago I had an implant done.  The Doc who did it had a sense of humor.  He said that we would have to build up the bone structure so asked me if I preferred human or cow bone.   Told him cow bone since my wife says I'm full of bullshit.  A few months later I went back for him to see how everything was knitting together.  On this visit I had a 1/2 inch wood drill bit told him he left it in my mouth on my last visit.  A lady (whom I had thought was a nurse) standing next to him fainted.  We caught her before she hit the floor.  He and the real nurses were laughing hard.  The implant has given me no problems at all over the last 20 years.  He checked it out last year and said it is doing very well.  The color matches the rest very well and visually you can't tell the difference.

My choices were cadaver bone (human) or cow, or pig, or he could do a newfangled procedure where he uses no bone but takes blood from me, puts it in a fancy machine in the back, does some kind of magic to it to turn it into a concoction that he puts in the socket that somehow signals my own immune system to target the area to grow new bone. That’s the one he uses on high risk patients because it works best and has the least rate of complications but it is more expensive.  I said, do that one.

So the day came and they had a hard time finding a vein. The nurse and the dentist were teaming up trying to get blood.  They had to poke me five times but they had given me laughing gas. It hurt like hell (these are not practiced phlebotomists). Not only did I not care that it hurt, I thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

So he pulls the tooth which was even funnier.  He took his time (apparently there’s a technique to it that minimizes trauma to the adjacent tissue or whatever) so he’s got the pliers in there, wiggling that tooth around and I’m just giggling up a storm. He moved it this way: Hilarious! He moved it that way: OMG that’s even funnier! Bwahahahaha!!

So he gets the blood product from the back and fools around with it mumbling something about a bit of my bone clinging to the tooth that he can mix in there, and stuffs it back into the socket and stitches it up.  So that was about 5 months ago, I went in for the x-ray recently and he said it looks great, the bone is growing back well and I don’t have a “collapsed sinus” which would have required a whole different procedure so it all looks real good. Wait another few weeks and we will be ready to install the post.

In the meantime I’ve had to get used to eating with a missing molar.

Nope.  Floss first, rinse with mouthwash to remove the ick, then brush.  This is the only proper way to do it.  So there!

I think the dental assistant flosses last to get rid of all the polishing compound that might get stuck between the teeth.

My dentist has forbidden me to use mouthwash.  I’m in the middle of getting an implant and something about the gum healing over the bone graft which takes like 6 months and mouthwash isn’t good for it.  I’ll have to ask but I got the idea he doesn’t like it in general because of the alcohol being too much of a drying agent.

HAH!  I was right!
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/dentists-reveal-the-correct-order-to-brush-your-teeth-floss-and-use-mouthwash

Since when do we believe anything we read on the internet?

I’ll have you know I recently had my teeth cleaned and the hygienist did the flossing last, after she was done with all the scraping and polishing.  So I’m still right.