Welcome to “Another Important Piece of Writing” a monthly newsletter/life update/writing exercise/rant/potentially the next most important piece of literature from the 21st century but probably not.
This month, I’ve developed beef with two Sydney dentists. How does one create beef with a health care provider, let alone two in the dental industry in such a short period of time, you ask? It’s simple, much like how any other beef comes to fruition, I was disrepected!
Our story starts with me deciding (or at least thinking) I was making enough money at my Big Girl Job™ that I could finally get the chips in my front four teeth repaired. I’ve chipped and had them repaired before and was told it was due to years of teeth grinding and/or acid reflux – two very cool, very hot problems to have.
I found a dentist near me that did $70 consultation only appointments which was an absolute score. The consultation went well with him explaining we could build up the chipped teeth, but I might need to a new nightguard as the old one probably won’t fit anymore. I was annoyed by this because I know from experience you can just reshape them with a drill, especially if it’s a millimetre or two difference. He suggested an x-ray and some other treatment but said that it’s totally up to me, no pressure.
I walked out to pay and was greeted with a bright eftpos screen displying $85. Confused, I explained on the website it said it was $70 for consult only. The previously-hot-dental-assistant-who-got-knocked-down-a-few-points-after-our-interaction explained, “That’s for existing patients, it’s actually $85 for new patients”.
“Right, ok…” I said, as I reluctantly pay passed away an extra coffee and cake day, while he fetched my dental plan from the printer and wished me a good day.
I sat outside of the x-ray place and marvelled at how much they expected me to shell out! It was going to be $250 to repair each tooth, plus an extra $800 for the replacement nightguard. If you included all the extra junk he recommended it rounded up to about $2500. Now, my Big Girl Job™ pays quite decently and I have some good benefits, but I was still in the process of replenishing my savings from the effects of ~being alive~ that TLDR; I didn’t have $1800 lying around for something so trivial as feeling better about my mouth.
This, surprisingly, is not one of the dentist’s I have beef with.
It took me about a week to realise, but since I still have a valid healthcare card until October, I was eligible to go to the dental hospital. If you’ve never been on Centrelink – first of all, good for you – but essentially, if you have a healthcare card you can have dental students do work on your teeth for free. Sure, it’s not making dental eligible for Medicare like people have begged for decades, plus they’re not fully fledged dentists so fuck knows what could happen; but even though all my wisdom teeth came in at different times I was miracuously on Centrelink everytime I needed one removed, so they all came out for free (yay, loopholes!).
I googled the dental hospital to make my appointment. They seemingly changed their name from “Sydney Dental Hospital” to “Sydney Emergency Dental Hospital” but I figured it would still all be the same.
All you have to do is call the hotline, if you’re not in pain you feign pain so they’ll take you seriously, then lock in an appointment for anywhere from 3-6 weeks times. I told them about the chips in my teeth and told them they were sensitive (they weren’t but I’ve had them fixed at a dental hospital in Brisbane before, so I know they have the ability to do it) and secured an appointment for 5 weeks time.
I was hoping the girl I had last time would somehow be looking after me again. She fudged some paperwork or told some lie that made me illigeable for a new nightguard last time I was there. Apparently I didn’t meet the criteria but she was one of those people who are… how do you say… not an asshole?
I was greeted by an older female dentist who seemed fine but she wasn’t my gal. I explain what was going on, how I chipped them from grinding and never had enough money to fix them. I told her that I have a job now but I was still quoted an obscene amount and of course… they were sensitive. Unlike every other time I’ve come to the dental hospital, I was meeted with immediate, seething judgement.
”I mean… look, this isn’t really an emergency… we’re an emergency hospital and this isn’t an emergency. Ah, look, um I don’t know, I suppose we could do two of them? We could probably fix two of them… but this isn’t an emergency?”
I explained I didn’t know it had to be an emergency. The person on the phone never explained they would only see me if it was an emergency. I’ve been here plenty of times without it being an emergency. Can’t you be cool and nice like the other girl and treat feeling ugly like an emergency?
I remembered the name change I saw on Google and figured, they must have cracked down on disgusting poor people with their unrealistic expectations of what a government run and funded service could provide for them.
We landed on repairing two teeth and I could either make a new appointment for probably 4 weeks time, or they could give me a voucher to take to a participating external dentist. I went with the latter. She numbed the shit out of my mouth and got to work, eventually complaining towards then end of the appointment that they were running late for the next. Oh my god, I get it… not an emergency.
When she was finished up she provided me with a mirror and found myself SHOOKETH to the CORETH! This absolutely cunt ass bitch of a dentist decided the two teeth that she would repair out of the front four, would be the TWO ON THE RIGHT!? I stupidly figured if she was going to fix TWO teeth, she would do THE FRONT TWO, you know – as to not look like a LOPSIDED GOOF!? This bitch hated me from the get go and this was her way of letting me the fuck know.
Silently fuming I thanked her, took my voucher and began furiously calling all the participating dentists in the area to fix this travesty. The first one I finally got through to said she could fit me in in two weeks. Two weeks like this!? I’d rather die. I kept them as a possibility and kept ringing more numbers. Somebody higher up was evidently looking out for me as I secured an appointment with a dentist for the next day, within walking distance from my house.
I sent some photos of my fucked up little smile to my Mum to commisterate and headed to the movies. Nobody can see my weird little mouth in the dark, I figured.
Friday rolls around and I head to an actual dental surgery to have work done, like I’m the fucking Queen of England or something. I tell him what happened and he assures me he’ll get the job done. He doesn’t see the need to numb me and he has a TV on the roof, so I’m liking this experience more and more every minute.
He gets to work and I’m watching some British(?) game show that’s just a larger verison of that arcade coin game where you get more points the more coins get pushed over a ledge. The contestant is getting really close to knocking off a question mark coin whose points or rewards I’m oblivious to, but I’m right into it.
The dentist seems to be wrapping up and asks me to run my tongue over the back of my teeth and let him know how it feels. It feels rough as guts and the anxiety of what the game has in store for Anne, begins to spills over into the faith I have in this dentist. I tell him how it feels and he continues to buff it down.
”What about now?”
I don’t really not what he was doing in there because it still felt the same. This happened another two times before he just decides he’s done. It still feels awful and needs more buffing but at this point he’s removed my bib, grabs the mirror and starts packing up.
I grab the mirror to check out my new symmetrical chompers and come to find he’s made the second tooth from the left abnormally long. Just as I’m about to mention it, he brings it up like he expected it was going to be an issue.
“This one is a bit-”
”It’s a bit long, right?
”Yeah, it was never that long…”
“That’s alright, that’s an easy fix” he assures me.
Lying back in the chair he drills away at the tooth to make it a more approriate length, and I ponder over why he would even make it so long when he has the same tooth on the other side to compare to? Isn’t more tooth more work? I think.
I remind him about my nightguard and after some faffing about from his assistant to try and find the right drill piece, he begins to reshape it as I knew was completely possible to do. After a couple times of trying it on and having to reshape it ever so slightly he seems really over it, and me, and I can’t really figure out why. Perhaps it was down to the fact that he’s only making $370 for this hour of work, when by my maths, he could be making about $1300. If I made $370 an hour I wouldn’t be complaing at all! But I suppose it you’re accustomed to $1000+ an hour, doing favours for annoying broke people in the system who demand smooth teeth mayn’t feel worth it.
After the receptionist accused my voucher of being fake, “It’s crooked? Look! Is this a photocopy?” Bitch, this is just what they gave me give me a break, I walk out onto the street and run my tongue over my teeth.
Both sides feels completely different… The dental hospital side feels what I expect built up teeth to feel like, a little thicker and rounded at the bottom… but after running my tongue over the left side there’s a stark difference. They feel thinner and more narrow towards the bottom with one that has a discernibly less polished, still somehow coarse back.
“How hard is it…” I think, “…to just copy the other side!?” I sigh, and add this guy to my newly formed “Dentist Shit List”.
I open my camera to check them out again. They look good. What I feel doesn’t translate to how they appear, so for that I’m thankful. At the end of the day even though I had to jump through hoops, game the system that’s designed to help me, and spend two days in dentist chairs mouth agape hoping it might go towards helping my blow job game… I did end up getting my teeth fixed for free which all and all isn’t an awful result.
~~~
I recently asked two of my good male friends when they were finally going to proprose to their long terms partners. The first said he was working on it, it’s just a case of getting another cash for the ring, “Good” I thought, “She is beautiful and deserve the world!”
My other friend, with an equally beautiful partner also deserving of the world told me “I don’t think we’re gonna get married, we don’t really believe in it…” and I had to pretend that that’s fine.
I know that marriage is essentially in and of itself a sham and is rooted in property exchange, misogyny and coercison – I am aware – however, it’s not about you! Weddings are for the people! Most importantly, me!
I want an excuse to go spend too much time and money on a dress and heels that I will inevitably ruin because you decided to have your reception in a barn! I want to be apart of a group chat where the bride is sharing screenshots of a text exchange with the grooms ex girlfriend who swears the dress she plans to wear isn’t white, but is actually cream coloured! I want to see somebody get so fucked up that they think they’re giving a speech to the happy couple, but they’re actually spewing nonsensical garbage to the plastic cake toppers!
Your wedding day isn’t about you, it’s about your friends and family, it’s about the people you hate but were obligied to invited due to unspoken social ettiquette and most importantly, it’s about the single people in your life that need a new main dating profile photo!
~~~
In a previous newsletter I talked about how I’m done with my mental health. I’m not, quote, going off my meds, dumping my psych and gonna start my day off with chilled white wine again (although it sounds kind of nice – kinda like the beginning of my own personal White Lotus), but I decided, I’m just doing way less.
This was going fine but I am unhappy to report that I have had a backslide. For about 3 weeks in a row, I kept having a horrific case of the Monday’s. I ordered Uber Eats from the train to meet me as I returned home, and would land in stomach bursting heap for the rest of the night.
On the third Monday I snapped, something had to give, I figured. I felt physically awful due to the state of my emotions, and I decided for some reason that I would give vagus nerve stimulation a try again. This, I thought, would be the cure to my ails.
If you’ve never heard of it before the crux of it is you have a big ass nerve that runs and connects to multiple parts of your body. The idea is that if you can massage/calm/release it one area of your body, it will have a flow on effect for the rest.
Fucks me why I chose this specific video, but I landed on one titled Vagus Nerve Stimulation — 3 Tricks To Stop Anxiety Fast. Perhaps it was the speed in which it promised to be anxiety free that drew me to it. I am, if not, a deperate gulliable bitch at the best of times. Majority of the video is the guy going on and on about what the nerve does and how it functions. He could use some lessons in word economy, I thought, while skimming through the video waiting for him to look a little physically crazy i.e. when the exercise portion starts.
I’m annoyed to say that after doing all the exercises I did feel better. I don’t know why that annoys me… I think maybe because he kind of did? His channel is called YOGABODY and although in theory I would love to be with a man who practices yoga, every guy I’ve known who has has been a fucking little freak.
Maybe it’s some deep seeded inbuilt misogyny, or it could be the fact that every dude I’ve known who does yoga is always ensuring that he’s stretching in front of you every half hour no matter the social situation. He’s also always obsessed with meditation in a way that makes you think, if you’re so good at being alone with your thoughts then why won’t you shut the fuck up?
After this the YouTube algorithm lined up a TED-Ed video called How Sugar Affects The Brain. As somebody is addicted to sugar in a very uncute way and since I had seemingly fallen off the give-less-a-fuck-about-self-improvement wagon, I forced myself to watch this as some sort of scared straight tactic. It just talked about the dopamine response one has from sugar and that eventually you will keep building up a tolerance, requiring more and more each time. Yeah, yeah, yeah I thought, call me out harder next time I thought, as if this video has been made as a direct personal attack to me, and me alone.
YouTube’s algorithm seemed to know that I was On One™ and was hitting me with hit after hit. I watched another TED-Ed video called Why You Procrastinate Even Though It Feels Bad (guilty!) followed by another called How To Manage Your Emotions. It was in the process of autoplaying a video called How To Deal With Rejection with the title card depicting a cartoon woman crying with the words “Heartbroken? Watch This!” that I thought… That’s enough for today actually! I may not be cured but I sure as shit won’t be called out like this by a bunch of lines of intelligent code.
I’ve gone back to giving less of a fuck about becoming a better more rounded person. I have too much wherewithal to become a full blown unapologetic nuisance, but maybe I’ll eventually find a happy medium where I’m a little bit of brat but everybody thinks it’s cute and endearing?
We’ll see x