When The Bad Things Come In Threes
Is anyone’s mouth worth twenty thousand dollars?
If you have been following my posts, you might have caught this story:
In it, I mentioned how I broke a molar earlier this week. FML, huh? Just one more reminder of the realities of being alive. Life happens. Shit happens. Bad things come in threes--and sometimes even multiples of threes.
Well, my week has been one of those weeks. More like three times three times three. The pressure's been building.
My four-year-old has been extra clingy lately, so my mom guilt also kicked into overdrive. As I’ve been trying to work (write) she’s been asking for more and more mama time. All day long. She climbs up onto my lap, touches my face and looks up at me wistfully, saying “I like mama! I want mama!”
One, two, three: it’s heartbreaking, adorable, and a little suffocating. Which means it’s been especially hard to get all of my work done.
This is a real snapshot of most days for me as a single mom writing from home:
- My daughter on one leg.
- My tablet on the other.
- My body I struggle to love.
- My body holding her toys.
- My daughter’s mess of Orbeez, Calico Critters, and sensory toys on the floor.
- My TV streaming a kid’s show in hopes it gives me enough time to write. Lately it’s Wonder Pets.
I sent her to her dad’s house yesterday for a long Father’s Day weekend. Even though I know she’ll be okay since she’ll have her step sisters and half brothers there, it’s still difficult. Even though I need a few days of alone time to work, I feel bad. She wanted to stay with me, and I feel so guilty that I can’t juggle it all on my own.
One, two, three: as a result, I’m behind on some freelance work, I’m behind on replying to readers, and I’m behind when it comes to working on my novel.
And then three more things:
- On Wednesday, I lost my largest client due to policy changes at Facebook. This is on top of an already enormous loss of clients over the past few months.
- Yesterday, I went to the dentist and discovered my mouth needs a lot of work to avoid further problems. AKA money I don’t have.
- Finally, I came home after the dentist to discover my electricity had been shut off.
The good news
The dentist filed down my broken tooth to remove the sharp parts, gave me a full exam and X-rays for only $19. This particular tooth is not infected.
And I paid my electric bill, so my electricity turned back on quickly because I had simply forgotten to pay it on time in all of my hustling lately.
The bad news
My molar broke for a very common reason: an old amalgam filling had weakened the tooth. Now I need a crown if I want to keep it and avoid decay.
I’m admittedly unnerved that I forgot to pay my electric bill. I've never had my electricity turned off as an adult in the past. So it was an honestly scary and panicky feeling.
The ugly news
As it turns out, I am in need of a number of crowns, fillings, root canals and root planing/scaling to the tune of $17,450. That's not a typo.
Seventeen thousand dollars. What? And then some. It might as well be twenty.
Just for a reasonably healthy smile, to prevent more bone loss and to keep the teeth I’ve got.
Bad things come in threes... and thousands of dollars.
How I got here
A few years ago, a dentist told me I needed about $6,000 to deal with my "immediate problem” teeth. Clearly, I didn’t have the money back then. At the time I was in a great deal of pain and I couldn’t stop crying. They gave me some Kleenex and a prescription for an antibiotic. Another dentist apologized to me, saying, “I think you’re in much more pain than you show.”
Every dentist I see tells me not to worry--just get a co-signer for it all. Most can’t seem to comprehend that I’m alone in this. There is no family to bail me out. There is no one to co-sign.
When my daughter was an infant, I asked a dental office if they’d take payments directly from me. I explained my situation, that I was on food stamps and just getting back to work. The dentist had me come in and get a root canal free of charge. He filled the tooth and warned me I would still eventually need a crown. Now when other dentists examine my teeth they criticize the fact that someone filled my tooth rather than pulling it or crowning it, but I’m still grateful.
I eventually did have another root canal last year that I managed to pay for, but I couldn’t afford the others.
Who gets to smile?
Hey, I brush, floss and rinse twice daily like I’m supposed to. But I’ve also been a teeth grinder in my sleep since childhood. And I spent seven years on a medicine called Lupron, which is known for causing bone loss later on in life. I can’t help but wonder how much of that is related. Or the fact that I've spent most of my life on some kind of restricted diet.
Pregnancy and breastfeeding also made my teeth worse for wear--they began crumbling just three days after giving birth and continued to decline over the past four years. It's not something we talk about much. How a woman's health can suffer for years after giving birth.
This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like I’m drowning in quicksand. But what can you do, right? It what it is.
When the office manager spelled out all the costs and asked me what I can do, I was a little flabbergasted. I was honest with him: if I ever had that kind of money I wouldn’t even have these teeth problems. Because I would have had the preventative care already.
Right now I’m still lucky because I can smile without anyone noticing the problems with my teeth. I have good days and bad days with the pain. But it won’t be that way for long if I don’t get the dental work done. So I have to wonder, whose mouth is worth twenty thousand dollars, anyway? Our teeth, our smiles… both are such a basic need. How can we possibly justify what’s become of dental care?
We treat good dental care like it’s only meant for people with money. There are “extraction clinics” for the poor and homeless. Most every cost-conscious clinic I visit encourages me to just pull any teeth I can’t afford to fix. Of course, losing our teeth is still rarely free. Paying $120 to have a tooth removed can still be called a "bargain" when regular offices charge more. And some of my problem teeth right now are problems because the poor clinics I went to in my twenties didn’t do my fillings properly, so new cavities formed above those fillings. Talk about $40 well-spent, good grief.
It makes me question if I’m a bad person simply because I haven’t made a lot of money in my lifetime. Some people would say that I am.
Or they say I haven’t worked hard enough to deserve proper dental care. Since we associate more money with more work and more deserving.
Coming from parents who taught me zilch about how to take care of myself in the real world, it’s amazing that I’ve been working since I was fourteen. Sure, I’ve had stints of unemployment like most people, but I’ve always found work again.
It’s ironic too, because people would treat me differently if I wasn’t working, but was married and had dental insurance under my husband. It’s one of those things that drives me nuts about being a single mom. Many people act like I’m only a good mother and worthwhile person if I am making more than enough money alone, or if I have a man to support me. On the flipside? How dare I aim for more!
The turning point
Yesterday morning when the office manager was going through page after page after page of work that needs to be done to save my teeth, my eyes began to burn and sting. I am a huge crier. And I am not good at fighting back my tears.
So I thought I was going to be stuck in yet another episode of “Shannon inappropriately cries in front of a stranger hour.” But something was different this time. Okay, yes, for a brief minute I thought about contacting The Ellen Show for help. I seriously did. But after that, I thought... I could have this money next year. I could keep hustling and change my entire financial situation. I could change my entire life.
Stranger things have happened. We see transformational stories everyday. I could be one of those stories too.
That gave me enough peace to not cry.
Look, I know it sounds absurd. Part of me thinks I must be crazy because my parents never instilled a growth mindset in me or my sister. Which is actually quite bizarre because our father was a freelance artist and muralist. And though he occasionally paid me to help him with his work, we never talked about how he got to where he was. He also lied to me about how much he made. So he was quite successful in his career, but terrible with money and usually acted as if he had none. Nevertheless, I don’t have to live that way. There’s no reason why I can’t cultivate a growth mindset in myself right now.
Shaunta Grimes recently wrote about how everybody has to get through mediocrity if they want to become truly successful. The only difference between us and the winners is that they didn’t give up when it looked like all was lost. I love that.
The truth is I don’t want to give up anymore. I want to break FREE. I reject the notion that there are too many writers in the world to even allow me to try. I reject the idea that I need to be someone else or package my work as something it’s not. I reject the arguments that writing for a living is selfish or unrealistic.
Writing is a discipline. Publishing has changed over the years, but writers are still getting book deals. The only thing standing in the way of my own successful career is me. Just me. Because the question isn’t “can I make it as a writer?” I know I can. The question is “will I do the work--and keep working--even when it looks like I’ll never make it?”
Poverty mindset is real. I grew up so deep within in it that it’s only natural I have never owned a car or my own house. I’ve barely even had credit cards. I’ve been homeless and I’m just one really bad paycheck away from being homeless again. Growing up so poor, no one ever told me it was okay to strive for more than just enough.
Because who am I to think I could write for a living and make more than barely enough? Enough to get driver’s lessons and buy a car, enough for a home and enough to fix this mouthful of problems. Enough to tell myself yes, I can go get my hair cut. Enough to worry a little less. Enough to buy what my daughter and I need--without fear.
Tune out the noise
If I'm honest, there are a lot of people who don’t want to see me succeed. Especially since I’m a single mom. It’s 2018 and people still act like a single mom is garbage. Like my life should be unnecessarily hard indefinitely because I had a child outside of marriage. Because I don't have a husband. They use phrases like “tough love” and talk about what’s “practical.” They tell me that writing is no career for someone like me. And then they ask, don't I want to get remarried?
As if pursuing a dream career and purpose is wrong.
Did you know that pregnancy crisis centers and government workforce offices would rather see people like me become supervisors at Burger King than encourage a creative career? They’d rather see people like me work in a daycare center even if that means we have no energy left for our own children at the end of the day. They don’t care about actual skillsets or growth.
So sure, there are some haters out there. Of everyone. (Go check out Tom Kuegler’s story on the fact). But there are also supporters and at the end of the day, I’m still my own biggest fan because I believe in the work I do. I’m not giving up because it’s hard or because I need more than $17K to fix my teeth. If anything, I aim to use those challenges to grow and get myself to a better place.
My ex’s mother told me yesterday that she’d listened to Girl, Wash Your Face on Audible and that everything I’m talking about reminds her of the book. I haven’t read it yet but understand enough to know what a compliment that is.
That said, I also want to say thank you to everyone who’s encouraged me to push forward and keep going:
Michael Thompson, Robin Klammer, Divina Grey, Norell Leung, Jodi Tandet, Alice Vuong, Deb Knobelman, PhD, Jessica Wildfire, Zach J. Payne, Sam Grittner, Chris Reynolds Crosby, Sam McKenzie Jr., Bethany Nelson, Monique Aimee Black, Karla B Monterrosa, John Walton, T.S. Narkissa Luna, J.J. Hartly, Sam Brightwell, Ornery Angel, Dan Penkoff and many, many more.
I know I am far from the only writer fighting their demons and working hard each day to reach that next level. I’m not the only writer with medical or dental needs, family drama, dashed hopes and new ones too. But if it wasn’t for the people mentioned, I just don’t think I would have been able to leave that dental office without tears. Not at all.