Yep. I read one of those “what if humans disappeared?” scenarios and it had the timeline for all the cute fluffy dogs and kitties to get eaten by the big dogs. Woof.
So, no gingers, then?
In Charles Willeford’s Hoke Moseley novel, No Hope for the Dead, Hoke’s teenage daughters unexpectedly come to live with him. One of them complains that her braces hurt her teeth, and he says “no problem, I’ll take them right off.” And so he does.
If a hard-boiled, down on his luck, police detective in Florida can remove braces, I think it shouldn’t be a problem post-apocalypse.
I have a titanium implant in my skull (the anchor for my hearing aid, a “BAHA”). Every few months, the skin around it decides it wants to grow up around the exterior portion and cover it up. Then it gets all red and inflamed and needs some heavy-duty steroid treatment to convince my scalp to stop the nonsense. It hurts terribly until it calms down. In my darker moments, I’ve worried about what might happen in a world where I couldn’t get that cream (even in a nursing home when I can’t communicate). The thing really can’t be removed without cutting out part of my skull, since the titanium is osseointegrated.
Basically, I just try not to think about it.