My teeth are in bad shape and I don’t have enough to fix them

Pardon my whining, but I find myself in an untenable situation and I don’t see a way out of it.

I consider myself self-employed as an Uber driver. I’m in my early 60s and have numerous health problems. Luckily I’m a veteran, so the VA covers almost everything. I have been making about $100-$150/day and I live in an apartment in San Antonio, Texas. I’m doing okay financially but I don’t have any savings to speak of and not a lot of cash at the end of the month.

The problem is my teeth. I’ve never taking the care with them and I spent a year a few years ago unemployed and living in a veteran’s home with two other men, “homeless” in the sense that I owned no home, paid no rent, and had nowhere else to go.

During that time I could not afford dental work and before you ask about dental services at the VA you essentially need to have had your teeth knocked out of your skull while on active duty to get them to treat you.

Once I started earning a living I would see the dentist when I had enough to pay as I went.

The problem now is: I’m nearly toothless. My two front teeth are okay (they have caps on them, and I have one implant to their side, and I have a good molar in the back/bottom, but otherwise my teeth are either crumbling or already missing.

My dentist want to pull all the other bottom teeth, make two implants, and then build snap-on dentures supported by the two implants. For the implants alone he wants to charge $5,000. $5,000 that I do not have.

So I’m afraid I’ll soon be toothless like a hobo and taking my meals through a straw.

I know a lot of people my age have lives that are worse than mine but I’m honestly afraid for the future.

I’m on a waiting list to get dental work by an organization that helps people with little money, but the waiting list is long and they still charge more than I can pay.

Anyway, like I said, I just needed to whine a little bit and get that off my chest.