Tag: Writing

Money

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash…

The above song is required listening for the following blog.

It’s been a couple of months since my last blog.

I’m a little less wise than I was since I last wrote something here, as I followed through upon my wisdom teeth surgery referenced in my last blog.

Thankfully, I store most of my wisdom elsewhere from my teeth, so no need to worry: I’m still a wiseass.

Part of what got me to write that previous blog, and this one, is the amount stuff costs.

I’ll forever be pissed about how much it cost for me to get my wisdom teeth removed, however, I’ve recently had a financial awakening and I wanted to write about that today.

While the wisdom tooth blog wasn’t the only one that mentioned finances, I have to wind the clocks back a little bit for this one.

As referenced in another blog of mine, I’ve recently moved out on my own for the first time ever. This came after the better part of the year living back at my parents’ house and attacking my credit card debt a little bit at a time.

Once I became credit debt-free, it didn’t take long for me to find my own place and get to where I am right now.

However, the fear of money still remained. Despite being a little wiser about when and where to spend my debit, my credit, and my savings, I still had this crippling fear of ending up back underneath the water.

This goes beyond my credit card debt, student debt, and more. This was a crippling fear. A fear that would make the toughest of folks stand still in its presence.

Allow me to dig into this a little deeper…

As an Irish Catholic, there are a few things about life that aren’t necessarily guarantees, but more likely than not if we share the same background:

  1. Beer is great every day that ends in “Y” and twice on Sunday.
  2. We’ll sing every song loudly and proudly whether we’re talented or not (or even know the lyrics).
  3. Soda bread always tastes better than it looks.
  4. Talking about money is like talking about Satan, just don’t do it.

The fourth one will obviously be the one I focus on today, but I can return to soda bread too if you’re ever curious in the future.

When I was growing up, I truly had the best childhood anyone could’ve asked for. Despite growing up with 4 siblings, I never had a bad Christmas or birthday in my life. Nor did any of my siblings.

My parents took care of us. Made sure we learned life’s many lessons, but also made sure home was always open to us. We never saw them struggle, nor say they couldn’t do something.

We went to Disney World. We constantly took road trips. We went to movies. We went to baseball games. All without any sign of trouble. If there was ever a time where we couldn’t have something, we always valued what we had at home instead.

There are signs looking back now that probably reveal my parents being better actors than putting on from my aged context clues:

One for sure is my mom getting a retail job right after the 2008 financial crisis. We just saw it as, mom got a new job.

Once I went to college and started having to pay a little closer attention to my own finances, I saw my mom stress over the amount of money the loans were going to cost me in the future to attend college in the present.

She ensured me that it would be possible to pay these loans off one day, but needed to make sure that I was sure about school and that I was sure about what I wanted to do. Thankfully for you, I stuck to writing and graduated:

On the other side of college, my loans all of a sudden became a real thing. I didn’t know what to do or where to begin. My mom would get so stressed about them and money any time I asked.

No fault to her, she’s an Irish Catholic woman with 5 kids. We have generational anxiety from that damned devil and his dollars.

Because money was something we never thought we had to worry about, it was something I never did worry about.

And I don’t mean we had Hawaiian Punch fountains or butlers, we just had so much fun all the time we never stopped to wonder how my parents got by.

They didn’t want us to see them struggle. As an adult now, I completely understand this.

Nobody wants to struggle and if they had to, nobody wants anyone to see them struggling.

Which is why when it was time to get a credit card and begin to pay off my loans, I wasn’t fully prepared for what was next.

I got too used to having fun all the time.

Money isn’t always equated to value. I don’t regret any ballgame I’ve been to, vacation I’ve been on, nor nights out at the bar with my friends (ok, maybe a few of those I would take back).

There’s life-value in those types of things. Life is meant to be enjoyed with the people you care about and I always make sure to have fun where I can and if I have to eat soup for a week or two to afford something, I will.

Unfortunately, money is required to do stuff in our society.

So when all the stuff I do for fun ran into a not very money-knowledgeable brain of mine, I caved. I felt like I failed. The only things in my mind were fine-dining and breathing:

All of that was because of this fear of money. I didn’t know how to approach my parents on the subject and didn’t want to bring it to my friends.

How could I? It is the devil after all.

However, the devil must be dealt with at some point in time. But I had to be prepared to fight this devil by becoming fear itself:

Well, no. I didn’t become Batman. But, I began learning discipline and I learned it from one of my friends whose literal job is to help people not be afraid of what strikes fear into all of us.

Jackson Fleming is one of my best friends. He married another one of my best friends and is the best Fortnite squad mate a guy could ask for.

Jackson and I never really discussed our professional duties beyond whether or not work sucked that day or not.

He is a financial advisor and is trained to become a pro at fighting the devil and his dollars. When he discovered how much it killed me to be piled under debt and to move back home, but even more so when I had recovered from that debt and still feared money, he jumped in to help me conquer that fear.

During a 20-minute phone call that also included a couple dick jokes here and there, Jackson simply turned my fear into confidence.

We have a plan for my retirement. We have a plan for when I can buy a house. I have a legitimate spending budget. I have a plan to attack the remainder of my student loans. I have confidence in myself.

Could I have sought out this help at any time before this? Of course I could have.

I didn’t know how to because my parents didn’t know how to. I also didn’t know how to because schools don’t teach it unless you study what Jackson wanted to study.

I could go down a rabbit hole about how I wish I learned more about finances in high school than the fuckin’ Unit Circle, but I digress.

TRIGONOMETRY TRIGGER WARNING:

Fuck this shit!

I’ll never have Bruce Wayne’s finances. I’ll never have the Bat-Credit Card:

But what I do have now is no fear. But no fear doesn’t mean fearless. Fears exist to constantly be conquered, but you can’t forget where fear got you in the first place.

You have the resources. While you can build your body to conquer life, you also have to build your mind. You have to take some leaps of faith without a protective rope:

You also have to rely on the people you care about. If you need help like I did, contact Jackson or anyone you know that can help you with this kind of thing.

FEAR only has one meaning to me now. Face Everything And Rise.

~DS

Return of the Crazy Eye Doctor Lady

Evil comes in many forms…

I believe this is the first time I’ve ever written a sequel.

People are always quick to judge sequels. Can they truly be better than the original? How have our characters grown or changed since last time? Can the villain outpace the original frightening appearance?

For those wondering, this is a sequel blog to this blog about a routine vision prescription update appointment and how it turned into an absolute nightmare that ended up costing me time, money, and sanity.

To give a brief overview of the situation: I was told that I had either nothing or cancer by an eye doctor. She held my prescription hostage until I got eyedrops and saw a specialist. I sat in the specialist’s waiting room for an hour only to be let go within 3 minutes of seeing the specialist who told me I was fine. I was then billed for my 3 minute visit and that infuriated me.

Caught up? Great. Let’s get into my trip back to the eye doctor from the other day…

It’s been two years since my nightmare trip to that eye doctor. Since then, I’ve had no issues with my eyes and the contacts that I switched to following that endeavor are monthly wears that have truly helped my eye health tremendously over daily/bi-weekly contacts.

In the year since, I changed the location of my eye appointments so I never had to go through that endeavor again. My 2024 appointment went on without a hitch at this new location which made me believe my 2025 one would be just as smooth.

So when I entered this location the other day, checked in, braved the puff of air in my eyes, and began to browse the wall of glasses, I wasn’t expecting any surprises at all.

Just then, a familiar presence rounded the corner and called my name…

Instantly, Boss Music started playing in my head and I felt like I was in the midst of a video game’s final level:

It was her. Of course it was. I go to a chain vision doctor, of course they rotate her around. My life was just a little too happy lately, so something had to knock me down a peg.

She asks how I’ve been.

I say “Great!”

She says “No issues? No flashes of white? Anything?”

I say “Nope, absolutely nothing.”

She says “That’s beautiful, thank you Jesus!”

The last time this woman was saying prayers for me, I was quite scared, so I, too, thanked Jesus for no issues for her to look even further into.

She pulls up the alphabet chart, she checks both of my eyes, comments on my beautiful Irish blues, and then, she sends me home with my prescription and a pair of contacts for free.

Truly, that simple. As simple as any other eye doctor visit ever has been. No ladies frames, just a prescription and a smile.

But, if only that is where our story ended….

As things go, I couldn’t go the week without some sort of health ailment.

The Crazy Eye Doctor Lady had to be an omen for something, but what could it be? I went to sleep that night thinking about how much had happened in life since that encounter.

Plenty of blogs here on this site. A couple of moves. Plenty of work. Plenty of beer. Plenty of laughs. A couple of tears. But hey, my eyes and I made it out alive on the other side, so what could possibly go wrong?

I woke up with a pain in my jaw.

It felt like I had gotten punched in the face and the pain stretched from my lower left jaw to my sinuses. I was curious if it was an allergy related ailment, but no. I was surprisingly breathing well through my nose.

I felt like this, but with a wicked headache:

I went to the mirror and looked inside my mouth. My impacted wisdom tooth on the bottom left side of my mouth was quite visible and my gums were bleeding. My breath tasted horrid and I had this metallic feeling in my mouth.

I’ve ignored the idea of getting my wisdom teeth removed for several years. It’s a risk I was willing to take because some people can live with them if they’re aligned correctly.

Well, mine aren’t aligned correctly. They’re clearly fucked up. And despite the strange joy I had felt after leaving the Crazy Eye Doctor Lady with no extracurriculars, something had to be afoot. It was this. It was time to get my wisdom teeth out.

I went to a dentist who took X-Rays. That dentist then referred me to an extraction specialist. Mind you, these two doctors are in separate offices a couple of miles away from each other.

And yes, I called them doctors. I’m no anti-dentite.

I was in the first dentist’s office for maybe 15 minutes because it was clear that I needed to get my wisdom teeth out. The extraction specialist, however, couldn’t see me until several days later at a different office.

Fine. I’ve gone a while with these impacted wisdom teeth. Religious ibuprofen will do the trick.

That brings us to my visit with the extraction specialist. I will mention that walking 20 minutes from the nearest train stop to this different office during midsummer in Chicago made me sweat like a whore in church, but that was the least of mine or the extraction specialist’s worries.

This doctor couldn’t have been a nicer guy. But, I did sit in the dentist chair watching a stock video loop of a very clear Finding Nemo ripoff fish tank for a half hour before being seen. I looked into the fake tank, thought about how much I was sweating, and zoned out:

Roku should stick to Roku City as its primary screensaver…

Once the doc came in, he explained to me the process of the surgery. He also explained to me that based on how my lower teeth are growing in, there’s a higher than zero percent chance that my jaw could be permanently numb following the surgery since my wisdom teeth are very close to certain nerves that control feel in my face.

He said it’s a “BIG if,” but, it’s still an “if.” Where’s the Crazy Eye Doctor Lady and her prayers when you need her?

Knowing that it’s the two bottom ones that are causing the most issues, these are the ones that certainly need to come out. My top two grew in straight but the doc said that they might eventually cause issues so I might as well knock out all four in one go.

The doc didn’t charge me for the consultation, which is fantastic. Compared to the last time I had to see a specialist, this was phenomenal news.

But then the estimations for the surgery itself came in. This surgery would need to be conducted at a third location and if I were to get all four teeth removed, it was going to cost me nearly $1700 after insurance. If you were unaware, each tooth costs several hundred dollars to remove.

I nearly vomited. I feel like it would’ve been better and more cost effective had my teeth been knocked out in a vicious piñata accident:

I said to the guy who ran my insurance, “That’s a lot. If I were to get just my bottom two teeth done, which are the real trouble makers, would it be less?”

He says, “Well, the doctor will probably recommend all four be removed at once.”

I said, “I know he will and I expect him to, he’s a doctor. However, my wallet recommends that I can live with the top two for now if it saves me a few bucks.”

He kindly reran it through with just the bottom teeth being considered. This was only going to cost me $800. Much better. Not great, but much better than before.

He says “Ok, so here it is with just the two teeth. I’d still like to confirm with the doctor if he recommends getting all four out or not and then I will follow up with you tomorrow or after the weekend.”

I couldn’t help but say, “I want to lean toward just doing the two. They are my teeth, it’s my choice, right? I know what he’ll recommend but I just paid rent yesterday. I’ve got bachelor parties, and weddings, and kids birthday parties coming up – it never ends! If I can just get the two out and survive on the other end, that would be what I want to do.”

This guy looked at me like I was nuts. I couldn’t believe it. Surely I couldn’t have been the only one that’s ever tried to save $800 at the dentist.

I wasn’t just speaking for me, I was speaking for society:

Anyway, that’s where the story ends for now. I might have to continue my fight against paying ridiculous amounts of money for medical consultations and procedures. But in the end, I will have at least two wisdom teeth out.

Let’s just hope it’s not Tim Whatley doing the procedure:

The sequel to the Crazy Eye Doctor Lady almost turned out to be disappointing. Just like Spider-Man 3 or any of the 20 JAWS sequels.

But just like the greatest sequels of our time, a twist is what carries us through a saga. The hero must lose. A new villain must emerge. Empire Strikes Back. The Dark Knight. Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties.

In the end for the Crazy Eye Doctor Lady, she was just the beginning. The real enemy was waiting in the wings, evolving into a new form to try and strike me down.

The evil entity was only acting through the Crazy Eye Doctor Lady and her Specialist. It continued to act through the Tooth Extraction Specialist and his crony at the front desk.

The true enemy has yet to be defeated: The American Medical System Strikes Again.

Insurance is a beautiful thing, but it can’t defeat evil alone. We’ll see what’s in store for me down the line.

Because whether my ailment is nothing, cancer, or a couple of painfully impacted wisdom teeth, the only one who truly suffers is once again: my bank account.

~DS