Dental problems common cause of ER visits

Just before 3 a.m., Sidney Lawhorn and his wife sit on a bed in the emergency department. She's wrapped in a white sheet to stay warm. He's nursing the toothache that prompted his hour-long drive here.

"I had a tooth pulled about 10 days ago and, yesterday, it got to hurting real bad, Lawhorn, 26, says, his speech slightly slurred by Novocain. "My dentist is on vacation. ... They told me if it got too bad to come up to the emergency room. It just got too bad, so I came up here. ... It's the only place I do come."

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Dental visits are the fifth-most-common reason for a visit to the UVA Medical Center. Lawhorn says he doesn't have dental insurance or health insurance. That's part of the reason why he ends up in the emergency room a couple of times a year or, '"whenever something happens," he says. "A toothache's got to be about the worst thing there is."

"I go through a dental clinic, which is kind of cheap, and that's one reason why he don't have nobody filling in for him," Lawhorn says. He turned to ask his wife, Shannon Lawhorn, 29, whether their dentist is the only one near their home in Nelson County. "He's the only cheap one we've got," she says.

Sidney Lawhorn, a farmhand, says he expects to pay about $300 for the emergency room visit — the end result of a financial screening process the hospital conducts to determine how much patients can afford to pay. "The bill is still outrageous," he says, "but (the screening) helps."

Lawhorn says his only complaint about the hospital is the long wait.

"The doctors and nurses, they do what they're supposed to. It's just the whole waiting period is kind of ridiculous. This is three hours tonight, and I brought her up here for a migraine and we sat here almost six hours. But this place is pretty good, they do take care of you."

When it comes to changing the nation's health care system, Lawhorn says he hopes lawmakers find a way to provide health insurance coverage to everyone. "They should help everybody in some kind of way," he says. "Don't nobody ask to be sick."

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