Well, it's done.

I've officially made a dentist appointment, knowing full well that I cannot really afford to go to the dentist, even with dental insurance, and especially since I just dropped $300 on new brakes and tie rod ends on my car (and it needs another $100-$200 more work in new tires and other parts). I think one of my fillings busted, cracked, gave way or something, because I have a nerve exposed that pains me every time I drink anything room temp or colder. It's torture.

But what will be even more torture, and more torturous than even the pain of dental work (which honestly I've grown quite used to in my life), is the pain in my wallet. My insurance is pretty solid, for it not being an in-network dentist, but even so, I will have to pay plenty over the long haul. I'm not happy about that, but I don't know.

I haven't been to the dentist in years. However, my mouth has not really "bothered" me. I've not had toothaches or anything, and the tooth I'm missing hasn't caused me much trouble because I do my best to keep the area clean. I probably have cavities, no doubt. But I've always had cavities, no matter how much I've brushed/flossed in my entire life. I just have really weak teeth, which is weird because I've never broken any bones in my life, and teeth are bones.

I've also had some shitty dentists in my life, one of which filled several of my cavities incorrectly (so I was told by my last dentist, who also was pretty shitty), leading to the tooth I lost eventually dying and falling out (while I was at NU, actually). That's because there was an air pocket under the filling from the first time it was filled. By then, I was on my fourth dentist or so, and he wanted me to get a root canal. Unfortunately, my parents and their insurance could not afford another root canal, so it just went by the wayside.

So a week from today, I'll be off to the dentist, ready to tell the guy (who apparently is awesome...my parents and brothers and Gerard all go there and think the guy's great), "OK, I'm poor and my mouth is a war zone. But we've got to start somewhere. Let's lay out a gameplan to meet over, say, five years time, looking at how much things will cost and how immediate things need to be done, using your input and mine. But I can't have all kinds of crap being done right away because I don't have the money or the prospects of getting the money." If he's as great as my family and roommate say, then this won't be a problem. So yeah...