I Have to Have Oral Surgery

I have to have oral surgery next week on my gum.

I've been dealing with a problem area in the gum behind one of the crowns that was put in for my bridge last fall for a couple of months now.  Since early to mid May, I guess.  I tried ignoring it for a while and when it didn't get better, finally gave in and went to my dentist.

I really like my dentist.  I had having to go to the dentist, any dentist, but I do like mine.

He tried a couple things and couldn't figure out what was causing the problem, so I had to go see a periodontist.  Which of course Medicaid will not pay for.  Apparently I have some sort of weird infection and a lot of inflammation and I have to have surgery to clean out the infection and also he is going to do a biopsy just to make sure nothing more serious is going on.  Of course neither Medicaid nor Medicare will pay for the surgery, but Medicare will pay for the pathologist to examine the tissue specimen taken from the biopsy.  Isn't that nice of them?

I am stressed.  I am more stressed about the idea of having to have surgery than about the money, which tells you how much this sort of thing triggers my anxiety and PTSD, since it is going to cost me $950.  $950 which of course I do not have.  I had to borrow it from a friend.  I have no clue how or when I will be able to pay him back.

And it's bad timing because there is all sorts of financial stress going on already, which I haven't written too much about.  I did mention that I had to start paying my Medicare premiums, which are $105 a month, and that this extra expense should cause my rent to go down a bit.  Well, I am still waiting for that to go into effect.  The reduced rent, I mean.  Paying the Medicare premiums started in July.  But my rent did not go down yet.  But on top of that, my freelance writing income has decreased and when I reported the changes to the state welfare department, they did something goofy and decreased my food stamps and increased my  Medicaid spend down, which is the opposite of what should have happened.  It will be fixed but it is a huge pain and is taking a while to fix.  So financially, things suck right now.

But surgery.  On my mouth.  It's triggering and I am stressed.