A Biting Truth

Fuck Murphy and fuck his laws. That little bastard is about to ruin my good time in Australia. Right now the $1600-1700 I spent on that little trip is coming back to bite me, and in a quite literal fashion. That's not to say I regret that trip, I just wish I'd had a little more foresight to be a little more economical about it. Oh, and then there was Andrej. But that's a dead horse I've beaten, shot, and ground up in a mulching machine, so we won't go over that territory again.

Basically, my top left wisdom tooth decided to make an unwise move and try to grow into my mouth. It's now partially erupted and impacting on my 2nd molar. It doesn't hurt. But I think the key word there is yet. Feels weird, though. And I think it might be slightly swollen. The bright side is, I now know why I had those toothaches just before and during my vacation, and I now know why they stopped. The thing is . . . I can't just leave it there. I did a little research on this and it'd be a big gamble to wait the 4 months it'll take for me to get back home, get back to work, and get my dental insurance back. The smart thing to do would be to get it surgically removed as soon as possible.

The problem being, I do *not* have the money for that. As I discussed last time, there is a large likely hood I won't even make rent on time. An average estimate for an impacted wisdom tooth removal is somewhere in the neighborhood of $200-$400 depending on the difficulty of the procedure, and it doesn't seem like this one's gonna be easy. Of course, the OSHC isn't gonna cover this. What the fuck did I give them $360 for, again? The fucking retarded part is that surgical removal isn't even done by a dentist. It's done by a surgeon. In a hospital. But they won't cover it because the surgery involves a tooth, therefore it comes under 'dental'. If I suddenly developed tonsilitis and they had to remove my tonsils, that'd be fine. But a wisdom tooth is out of the question. What the fuck is with that double-standard? Am I the only one who thinks that is utterly stupid?

There is always the option of going ahead and getting it done and . . . ya know . . . not paying. By the time I defaulted on it I'd be leaving the country anyway. The American credit agencies wouldn't give a shit about it, but good luck to me trying to ever get back into Australia, though. So meh, probably not worth that. I think what I'm gonna do is go ahead and get it over with and then send the bill off to my uncle/mom's lawyer. If they won't use my trust fund to cover it, then I'll just pay it off slowly over time. Or, in the off chance they take Amex, I can use that and then pay Amex off over time. It'd be more expensive to do that in the long run, but at least I wouldn't risk having the visa board on my ass.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope I get that chance to take out that short term loan sometime very soon.

Aussie Doozy of the Day:
They pronounce 'z' as 'zed' and a '.' is a full stop. Apparently, the US is the only English speaking nation that pronounces these things any other way.