Dominic Guttierez
Siskiyou County
Anjelig Gutierrez discovered that her son, Dominic, had fragile teeth when he was a toddler. “He chipped a tooth when he was about 2 years old,” she said. “He also gets cavities easily.”
Anjelig lives in Yreka, CA, an area with only one dentist who accepts Medi-Cal, and where it takes months to get an appointment. “The staff at Early Head Start kept telling me that he needed to get his teeth seen, but the appointment was a long time away,” she said. Eventually, they were able to get an appointment in Sacramento, where the wait was three months. “Thankfully, Head Start helped me with transportation, because it was three hours to get there. Dominic was in pain, and he cried the whole way.” While waiting months for an appointment, Dominic’s dental needs had worsened so much that he needed to have six silver crowns on his teeth.
Over the next three years, Dominic, now age 5, periodically complained about his teeth hurting. “Three times I made appointments, waited months to get in, then they didn’t find anything wrong,” Anjelig said. During the third dental visit, an abscess was discovered above several front teeth. Dominic and Anjelig listened to the dentist describe the treatment, which involved pulling several teeth. “With my son sitting next to me, the dentist said that I was going to have to hold my son’s head hard and keep it still, while he got in there and yanked the teeth out,” she said. “I could tell from my son’s face that he was terrified.” Anjelig was unwilling to participate in the treatment, and asked for a referral instead to a pediatric dentist. It took nearly four months, but the dental office eventually complied and gave Anjelig a grant to see a dentist more than 65 miles away.
The pediatric dentist she saw gave Dominic a different prognosis. He said that there was no abscess. The teeth that were supposed to be pulled were loose naturally. “They’re baby teeth that will fallout soon,” Anjelig said. Anjelig appreciates the positive outcome for her son’s oral health; however, she is worn-out by the difficulties with seeing a dentist. “If he says that his teeth hurt, I should be able to get him an appointment without waiting for months and months. But there’s only one dentist, so we have to wait.”
