do you have a moment to talk about frith, our lord and savior?

paypal.me/asteronauts | venmo: $asterlux | cashapp: $asteronaut | gofundme

let me start from the beginning. my name is aster. im a black nonbinary person who was born with a genetic connective tissue disorder called ehlers-danlos syndrome, specifically hypermobile type. among being prone to frequent sprains, subluxations, and dislocations and a nervous system that doesn’t work properly, h-eds affects my mouth, causing me to have a high, crowded, and narrow pallette. i’ve had dental issues since i was really little. i didn’t realize the exact reason why until last year (12/2019), when i finally got my official diagnosis of h-eds after five years of knowing i have it.

my mother has always been distrustful of medical professionals due to the years of medical abuse and discrimination our family has faced due to our blackness, womanhood, and chronic illness, so i rarely went to the doctor growing up. this includes the dentist.

three years ago, my bottom right wisdom tooth broke due to a cavity. it hurt a lot, but i was so stressed dealing with trying to work while severely disabled and dealing with extreme poverty that i just ignored the pain and went on with my life. after all, i am in pain every day. what’s a little more? but last year, after two years of oral pain causing me to be unable to eat at times, i finally went to the dentist. they said that i had a tooth infection and the beginnings of gum disease, that i was at risk of losing my teeth, and recommended that i get all four wisdom teeth removed and a deep cleaning. the price of it all scared me away, so i resigned myself to ignoring the pain for another year.

now, my gums are extremely swollen. i can’t chew on my right side at all and all of my teeth hurt. so i finally decided to brave the dentist again. i made and cancelled and missed appointments about 8 times before i finally decided to force myself to go today. ive heard a lot of horror stories about people getting infections in their faces or even going septic from infected teeth and gums, and that was enough to scare me into braving my fear.

they pretty much said the same thing as they said last year, except its worse now and about 2000 dollars more expensive - and that’s if my medicaid decides to cover my wisdom teeth removal as an emergency expense.

here is a summary of all the stuff they wanna do. im going to try and skimp out on a bit of it - i need bone graphs for my bottom two wisdom teeth but i figured just getting them removed would be enough. they recommend general anaesthesia, especially because my eds makes me insensitive to local anaesthesia so ill still probably feel everything if they use it. they also want to do a deep cleaning of my teeth for my periodontitis so it doesnt get worse and i end up losing more teeth

i would try and get dental insurance, but my income is too low for me to qualify for any state health plans other than medicaid and they only cover up to 1,000 in emergency dental work per year, so i’m out of luck on that front. im too disabled to work full time again especially with covid but im not disabled enough to qualify for disability because my disorders arent “well documented” enough so im kind of screwed on that front too.

i know this is a lot. thank you to everyone who has helped me in recent months. im trying really hard to hold onto hope that things will get better, but its really hard some days. being able to ease at least some of my pain would be a huge weight off my shoulders. i would ask my family for help, but we’re pretty much estranged and my mom is the full time caretaker of my developmentally disabled little brother and pretty much lives off his disability checks for the moment. please don’t ignore this post. remember that shares are much more valuable than likes and that anything helps. thank you. <3

I’ve been wanting to draw one of dollightful’s dolls for a long time now and I finally finished this picture that I’ve been working on for like five months

here’s the video of her making the doll for those interested!