Coffee heat rising

Health care

Gaaaahhhh! Wouldntcha know it?

by

Well… Of course you’d know it. We all know it:

Computers Crash.

And when do they crash?

Right:

When you’re tired.

When you hurt all over.

When you most need the damn thing.

When you least feel like farting with the damn thing…

WHY is that?

Fortunately, I have a subscription to Best Buy’s “TotalTech” service. That lash-up, by the way, is worth the price in spades! Three times I’ve had to call those guys out here. They show up at the house and they bang around and fiddle around and actually FIX the damn thing. Without me having to unplug stuff and tote it up to a shop. Need to call them now — it’s 7:15 p.m., but they claim to be reachable 24/7. We shall see, in a few minutes.

The thing is reloading now…sorta…at the speed of a snail swimming through a bowl of honey. I’m hoping if it can be forced to reboot, it’ll kick back on. But…well…don’t have much hope.

The machine is a certifiable antique. A very, VERY old iMac. I use it mostly as a TV set — that’s what I tried to rev it up for this evening: to watch PBS News. Looks like that ain’t going to happen.

For ordinary computing tasks — word processing, Excel, cruising the Web, and whatnot — I use a newer MacBook. Even that’s getting pretty old now. But it still works, and I like it because I can loaf in a comfortable chair or on the bed while playing on the Web. Mostly the iMac serves as Command Central — a number of tasks that keep both machines online and operating run through that thing — and to amuse myself while I’m standing in that room ironing clothes. Plus it has to be turned on for the printer to work. No iMac, no printing from the MacBook.

Okay, it sllllllooooooowwwwwwlllleeeee arrived at the end of the black reboot bar…and now seems to be hung there. Am I going to shut down and try to turn it back on?

Don’t you just KNOW this is gonna mean I have to to buy a new iMac, to the tune of how many berzillion bucks?  And since I’ve about shut down the editing business, that adventure won’t even be tax-deductible. Helle’s Belles!

{sigh}

Okay, got it to turn off — with some difficulty. Now to wait for…oh, say…five minutes or so and then try to turn it back on. Har har! good luck with that, eh?

The timer looks kinda peaked…probably out of battery juice. How do I NOT feel like tracking down batteries,  IF the stash still contains any that fit in that thing…

…

… …

… … …

And now it’s sorta rebooting, or trying to: verrrrrrrrrrrrreeeee sllllloooooooollllleeeeeee

Yea verily, my guess would be it’s not gonna reboot.

Oh damn oh hell…now am I gonna have to buy a new computer, on top of all the other mechanical headaches?

Its little reboot bar is c-r-r-a-a-w-w-w-l-i-i-i-n-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g-g-g across the screen. Silently, ever silently. My guess is that if the thing reboots, it won’t be in our lifetime.

Set the timer for five minutes. If it hasn’t rebooted by then, I’ll call TotalTech (24 hours! Even at 7:30 on a Friday night!) and try to get somebody over here.

In the Berzillion Bucks Department, the refrigerator that AMEX extracted, for free, from the sleazy B&B Appliances outfit, while less than optimal, IS running.

Five Minutes Later

Still crawwwwwwwllllliiiing. But it’s sllllooooowwwwwwwllleeee nearing the end of the reboot bar. Better wait another five or ten minutes to see if it gets there and, if so, what happens then.

How do I hate this computer stuff? Lemme count the ways…

Believe it or not, back in the heady days of the infant IBM PCs, I used to be highly techie. For the time, that is.

But the techie stuff left me behind. Truth to tell, I just lost interest in it. So in very little time — a matter of months, really, I was in the dust.

And never felt much desire to crawl out of the dust, truth to tell.

Okay, let’s play a game of Klondike Solitaire on the MacBook, then go in the other room, shut down, and try to reboot the iMac come Hell or High Water.

You know and I know that will cause the damn thing to crash in flames, right?

Well. Believe it or not, thanks to American Express I have a functioning, relatively quiet refrigerator…flat-out FREE.

AMEX made the sleazy B&B Appliances refund my money, 100%. Not long afterward — a day or so — the weird noises ceased and the fridge started to work normally. It’s still obviously a rip-off: you can tell it was damaged and broken in several places, which they tried to cover up. BUT…it does work. So…that would mean there’s no need to run right out and drop $850 to $1,000 on another refrigerator. Especially since I’ll be dropping that much or more on a new computer.

Half-an-hour or 40 minutes later…

Endlessly on the phone with the Best Buy “geeks.” The soonest they can send a tech over to work on the thing is the 22nd.  That’s five days from now.

Five days in which I cannot print anything…because for reasons that I’ve never been able to figure out, the printer will talk ONLY with the desktop iMac. It won’t print anything from the laptop unless the desktop is turned on AND working.

Jayzuz!

Ohhhh well! at least they are gonna come over, and I don’t have to drag the damn desktop in to the store and try to explain the problem.

To perfect this predicament, next week I have a “virtual appointment: with MayoDoc. Cripes! If anything happens to the laptop, I’m not going to be able to do that…and knowing the way things have been going — whatever can go wrong will go wrong — you may be damn sure that the laptop will go on the fritz that very morning.

Best Buy’s “Total Tech” crew cannot be beat…at least so far, in my experience. Those guys have been great. I could do without having to wait the better part of a week (that’s unusual: they usually show up the next day), but since I’ve shucked off the clients, there’s no real need to HAVE to have a functioning printer right this minute. My son will print anything crucial, I’m sure. WonderAccountant, who’s across the street, might do it in a pinch…if I can work up the nerve to ask her. But by and large, nothing urgent has to be done.

Which reminds me…we DO have a new (if cheapo) printer stashed in there…if push comes to shove, I can ask the guy to connect that. Probably won’t produce copy that looks as classy, but it will produce…something. Probably. Maybe.

Over to Lowe’s this afternoon to look at LG refrigerators. Those seem to be the highest-rated of the whole lot. And yes, Lowe’s does have LGs, and by golly, they have one that is exactly what I want! A stripped-down model: top freezer, bottom fridge, each with one door (not two), $900.

Having been bopped about the head and shoulders over the Great Refrigerator Purchase, this time I refrained from whipping out the charge card. But think in a day or two I’ll probably go over there and buy one.

It’s a challenge to my cheap-skateitude! The evil local dealer’s unit is working reasonably well now. It’s noisier than I’d like, but not so much as to keep you awake all night. And thanks to American Express, I’ve got it essentially for free! They refused to take it back (they’re not kidding about their “no returns” policy) and AMEX refuses to pay them. So that leaves the thing in my kitchen.

On the one hand, I’d like never to see it again (to say nothing of never to hear it again…), but on the other…hey: what we have here is, when you come right down to it, a free refrigerator.

  • Is it brand-new? Probably not.
  • Does it have a few dents? Yep.
  • Has it likely seen some repair work? No doubt.
  • But does it work? Sure does….

So…to the cheapskate mind, it just seems downright foolish to replace it with a $900 unit.

3:30 a.m.

A-n-n-d…to make things perfect, it looks like a long-ago, potentially life-threatening infection is recurring. I should get in the car and start driving…driving…driving out to the Mayo. But…forgodsake.

Not. Now.

on and on and endlessly on….

Electronic Run-arounds in the Wild New Year

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Well, if starters are any clue, it looks like 2023 is gonna be one helluva year. We have…

  • a monster blizzard blasting away at most of the country, which has…
  • blocked air traffic and no doubt much of the highway traffic nationwide…
  • Covid resurgent in China, which has obligingly reopened its borders(!)…
  • a major storm bearing down on Northern California, whose residents by and large do not know what is meant by the term “major storm”…
  • starving refugees from garden spots like Rohynga
  • a pair of tourists stroll out across a frozen lake in northern Arizona, fall through the ice, and drown (what is it about Arizona that reduces tourists to morons?)
  • a-n-n-n-d…on the micro-level: my jaw hurts, possibly dislocated

It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, with temps in the 50s — which here in the low desert is passing crisp.

Naturally, whenever you need to talk with a doctor, it’s ALWAYS a weekend or a holiday. Called the dentist’s office. Got a runaround. He was supposed to call me back. Nary a word…probably because he’s calling from a blocked area code. My phone is set to block calls from several of the area codes around Maricopa County, where I know no one and which are regularly spoofed by nuisance phone solicitors to disguise pestering phone calls.

So: electronic runarounds of the day #1 and #2: jump through hoop jump through hoop jump through hoop to finally get a human at the doctor’s office, and then get told he’ll call me back…which doesn’t happen, probably because I’ve had to disable part of my own phone system to block the nonstop barrage of phone solicitation.

Next: I need some more nose spray — the stuff that actually works, to wit: Afrin.

Big Brother wishing to protect us from ourselves, you can no longer buy Afrin in a sane size. You get half an ounce from any purveyor at Amazon. (Why? Because if you overdo the stuff, you just make your nose stuffier than it already was. Since you’re too stupid to grasp that concept, Big Brother must take it out of your sticky little hands…)

So any time now I do need to get off my duff and traipse over to the Albertson’s or the Walgreen’s and buy some more of the damn stuff. And…how can I count the ways I do NOT want to go out in the traffic, dodge fellow homicidal drivers, dodge stoned bums, dodge panhandlers for the privilege of buying enough nose spray to unclog my damn head???

This is likely to turn into another runaround, because you can be sure one or the other of those stores no longer carries the gunk at all. AND you can be sure that whichever store I enter first, that’s the store that doesn’t carry it anymore. Yep.

***

Woo HOO!

Wrongola! The journey down to the bum-infested corner was a success! Not only did the corner Walgreen’s NOT have any bums standing at the door (someone new bought the franchise and apparently decided to clean the place up a bit), but they DID have Afrin in a full one-fluid-ounce size!!!!

A miracle.

That’ll last me at least a year or two. I’m thinking maybe I’d better buy another bottle or two, because dontcha just KNOW this is the last we’ll see of that stuff…  Two more squirt bottles of that size would probably last me to the end of my life.

Hungry. The other day I (stupidleeee!) bought a microwaveable package of something billed as macaroni and cheese. Ohhhkayyy…

NOW, I figure, is the time to heat that stuff up. Num num, eh?

Well, no.

NEVER is the time to heat that stuff up.

😀

What on EARTH is the matter with Americans that we eat the sh!t you can buy off grocery shelves???

Ugh. Macaroni and cheese that was absolutely, positively devoid of flavor.

Who eats this stuff?

Why??????

After a few icky bites, I threw the whole thing out.

You — yeah, you, dear reader: you’re presumably American, right? Or more or less so?  Do YOU eat crap like that? WHY?

For less than the amount of time it took to drive to the grocery store, I could have condescended to make myself…you know…an actual sandwich. With real cheese on it. And a real tomato on the side. I could have fired up the barbecue and tossed on a slab of steak, a hamburger, or a chunk of chicken. And a fistful of asparagus spears, doused in olive oil and fresh lemon juice.

Why, really, do we sacrifice edibility for what we imagine to be convenience?

Cruising back into the’Hood… The homeless folks were resting in the bus stop’s covered bench. None of them seemed to be hitting up passers-by, probably because there were no passers-by — the locals having grown wise to the ecology in those parts. One of them had what looked like an iPhone, but it might have been a cheaper smartphone of some other brand.

Before we squawk YOW!! I CAN’T AFFORD ONE OF THOSE THINGS, in fact, they don’t afford them The local social services provide them, free, to the certifiably homeless. Yes, it would be significantly cheaper for the taxpayer to provide flip phones that could be used to dial around. But WTF. There must be better things to complain about. Somewhere.

Still. I do wish someone would pay my T-Mobile bill, so as to make using my cell phone free…

 

 

Still Struggling to Get Back

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Wow! Despite trying to reconstitute Funny a week or three ago, I’ve drifted away again. Seems like life has devolved into one hassle after another hassle after another hassle after another.

Got an appointment this noon at the Mayo. Fortunately, it’s at the campus in Phoenix, not the one way to He!! and gone out on the far side of Scottsdale, halfway to Payson. But it’s still a long drive, most practically done over a hectic freeway where, if your car breaks down, you’re pretty much screwed. Yes, I do have a cell phone, but I hate the things and have one helluva time trying to make it work. So…if the Tank craps out, today will be even more unpleasant than it’s already slated to be.

LOL! It’s already started out on the wrong…uhm…foot(?). Needed to print out the instructions the Mayo sent  — a trick, since they sent it via their obnoxious “Portal” lash-up, whose documents will not print out from my system, meaning I had to copy and paste the thing into Word, then print it on my machine, which hung and refused to be unhung. leading to an hour of farting with computer equipment. It’s now 7:30, my nerves are on edge, I haven’t had anything to eat, the dog hasn’t been walked, the supposedly “fixed” tooth in my upper jaw that seems to have caused an eye cyst hurts (yes: did you know that dental work can cause a cyst in your eye???), and I wanna bite someone. Already I’ve had so many sh!t-fits the poor little dog is hiding under the toilet.

Boyoboy, how i do NOT wanna spend the afternoon at the Mayo being tortured?!? These tests are going to take four hours! At the end of which, you may be sure, they’re gonna say they can’t figure anything out. Because…well: because. That’s the way things go, eh?

{sigh}

Y’know, when IBM first brought us the PC, I was an enthusiastic early adapter. But….

Today, I’m coming to hate computers. And not hate them….

Admittedly, I spend most of my conscious hours online. If I’m not reading news or cruising the Internet, I’m playing games. Endlessly, pointlessly, time-wastingly playing games.

And really: CAN you think of a worse way to spend the last few years of your life? Seriously?

Not much time is left to me, yet here I am, wasting it diddling with stupid, pointless, meaningless, eye-glazing online games. And Quora. And Facebook.

What else could I be doing? 

Well, not much that’s any more meaningful, come to think of it.

At this time of year, I could be hiking in the Mountain Preserve.

Why am I not?

Well…I’m leery of taking the dog out there — rattlesnakes, y’know. She pokes her head under every creosotebush, and sooner or later she’s going to get hurt or killed doing that.

And given my age and increasing decrepitude, I’m less than perfectly comfortable hiking around out there alone. One fall, and I’m screwed, even if not dead.

One guy — much younger and much more outdoorsy than me — slipped on a steep stretch on the north side of the mountain (where I used to hike all the time). He hurt his foot or ankle so that he couldn’t walk. His phone would not work because of the granite all around him. He hollered for help, and no one heard him. He ended up spending the whole night up there(!!!). The following morning, he realized people in the houses at the western base of the mountain might be coming out to go to work, so he started hollering again. Yelling. And yelling…and yelling…and yelling…. finally some fellow came out to get his newspaper, heard the guy’s cries out in the distance, and called the cops. They had to get a team to haul him down off the mountain.

So as you can imagine, my enthusiasm for prancing around up there is less than vivid these days.

There’s a (very!!!) upscale neighborhood over north of the Biltmore, where elegant mansions populate rolling hills that look out over the smog…uhm, city. This is an excellent place for mild walking exercise over paved roads…

Why do I not drive over there every day and hike around those elegant hills?

The main reason is that there’s no place to park. Well, there is and there isn’t. You’d have to leave your car on the street in front of someone’s house, and then…find your way back to it. Easier said than done: all those streets are winding little lanes, and it’s easy to get lost up there. You have a real good shot at losing your car. And…gooooood luck getting someone to help you. How do you call the cops and tell them to come help you if you don’t know where you are?

Second reason, of course, is that it is RitzyTitzyville, which means that you have almost no chance of getting help: no stores to go into, no houses where anyone would answer the door, no nothin’. Likely you wouldn’t even be able to get them to call the cops, which would be your best way of getting found once you got lost.

And finally, it being RitzyTitzyville, if you park your car on the street in front of someone’s house, the rich person or her servants will likely think you’re some kind of criminal, call the cops, and have your car towed.

So today will be utterly absorbed with traipsing to the freaking Mayo Clinic.

Meanwhile, the (expensive!!!!!) doorknob on the front door broke. The locksmith is supposed to show up tomorrow morning to fix it. Between now and then, dodging traipses to doctors’ offices, I’ve got to traipse to Home Depot and try to find a matching Kwikset doorknob.

Good luck with that. I’ve been here how long…eight or ten years? How much chance do you suppose there IS that I’ll be able to find hardware to match?

Yeah.

Well, I’ll have to stop by the Depot on the way home from the Mayo, and since these accursed tests are supposed to last a good four hours, it’ll be 5:00 p.m. by the time I get there…in the middle of the hideous rush-hour traffic.

Oh, good! Not one but TWO of the neighbors’ yard dudes just showed up at the same time. And they’re BOTH out there roaring away with their blowers and other racket-makers.

Gotta get going… And so, away!

Times Have Been a-Changin’…

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Couple days ago, I had occasion to drive through the neighborhood around the old-folkerie where my father chose to live out the last years of his life.  It’s over on the easterly side of North Central Phoenix — actually, within (almost reasonable) walking distance of the big North Central house where DXH and I took up residence, just to show the world what we could afford.

Killing time drivin’ around the other morning was kinda fun, kinda sentimental. After running away from the church, being told we had no choir today (why??????), I filled the gas tank and then cruised up into some of the (relatively) old neighborhoods over in the area of my favorite QT station. Part of this area comprises the easterly section of a renowned slum known as Sunnyslope.

My! We’ve been told that the ‘Slope has gentrified…. They ain’t kiddin’!!

WHAT a difference. Houses and whole streets that used to be run-down dumps have been cleaned up and painted up and spiffed up…gosh! Some of those little houses — built as homes for working-class folk, downright tiny — are suddenly VERY cute.

A decade ago, you couldn’t have gotten me even to drive around in there — because it wasn’t safe. Now, if I were in the market for a centrally located house with “charm,” that would be one of the areas where I would look.

Meanwhile, in the center of this middle-classifying neighborhood, the old-folkerie where my father retreated after my mother died has been HUGELY revamped. “Gentrified” ain’t the word for it.

When my father was there, it was a sprawl of single-story garden apartments arranged around a dining/activity center/nursing home. Renamed — no longer “Orangewood” but the ever-so-snootier-sounding “Terraces” — it’s three stories, painted in the latest, most stylish eye-searing white and beige. It’s spread out vastly — probably three times the footprint of the old place. And it looks bloody expensive.

Apparently it is: I hear tell it costs even more than the Beatitudes, whose business model is based on bankrupting the inmates.

It used to be that the neighborhood where this fine institution resided was…well…shall we say trending toward shabby (not to emit the word “slummy).”  Now it’s all been cleaned up, spiffed up, painted up, even in some areas rebuilt! Who’d’ve ever thunk! I would call it an upper-middle-class neighborhood now.

Weird!

In other precincts for the agèd, my dear friend L. (of the J. & L. duo) passed on a few days ago. He and his wife J. had, you may recall, moved into a similar institute called the Beatitudes, over L.’s vehement objections. But L. was very elderly — 94 years old — and his health was failing fast. He’d fallen a couple of times, and J. found she couldn’t help him get back on his feet by herself…so was justifiably frightened of what might happen if she couldn’t find someone quickly to get him back upright. Additionally, they had a demented neighbor who took to making trouble for them. One of this character’s more recent antics was making like she was going to run him down in her car.

So even though L. did not want to go, it was clear that getting away from their pretty little patio home was the wisest move, and, given that, the nursing care offered by the Beatitudes was a godsend for J., if not for L.

On the other hand…speaking of getting away…

J. was right, and within a year or so, L. passed on. A-n-n-d…within a week of the burial service, her daughters packed up what remained of her worldly goods and drove them and her off to California, where they live near Sacramento.

GONE!

So much for the glories of the old-folkerie. As soon as the most pressing need was past, she was outa there.

That has to have been a very pricey maneuver. Shortly after they moved into the place, she told me it cost her everything she netted from the sale of their handsome North Central Avenue patio home to get them in there. Basically, she forked over a huge chunk of her net worth to obtain end-of-life care for L.

Think you could do better at the Terraces? After a bracing buy-in, you’ll pay a staggering monthly fee. For that you get a far better designed and roomier apartment than the cramped space J. & L. landed in. But…good luck to you if you run out of money before you run out of life.

Heaven help us.

Why should we have to impoverish ourselves, our spouses, and our children to pass from this world in peace?

Never a Freakin’ Dull Moment…

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DepositPhoto; Rainy Weather © dnaumoidSo….how is it possible for the day to be soooo busy before 7:30 in the morning? 

Incredibly, the Dog’s human managed to sleep all the way through till nigh unto 5 a.m. which of late represents some kind of record.

It’s been raining all night; thunderstorms and more rain predicted. Still…at 5:00 it’s relatively cool, which is an unfamiliar mercy. “Relatively,” though, is a relative term… 😀

Human slams around getting dressed. Dog barks: someone’s in back. Grab a steak knife, peer out the back door, and…by damn! There’s New Pool Dude out there,

Holy mackerel.

Well, you can’t blame him for wanting to get through the day’s pool jobs before the sun comes up, that’s for sure!

Bridle up the Dog: out the door. 

Even though it’s relatively(!)(?) cool, the air is SOOO muggy and warm it’s a swamp out there.

The cops are buzzing Gangbanger Central to the north of us…never a good sign. Is it safe to forge ahead? Hm. Consider the options:

  • Delaying the doggy-walk means canceling the doggy-walk, because it will soon be too hot to stroll around outdoors.
  • Proceeding with the doggy-walk means taking one’s chances with the Drama of the Day.
  • Heading south from the Shack means skirting the park, which at this hour will be overrun by idiots with their dogs off the leash, risking a dog fight.
  • On the other hand, any bums who chose to sleep out in the rain last night will be getting out of bed (as it were) and stumbling around. If this has meaning, I dunno what it is. Other than that I need a German shepherd, not a 23-pound corgi.

Oh WTF: into Upper Richistan it is!

The cop copter is north of Gangbanger’s Way, which suggests the scene of the drama is either north of the canal (meaning they’re after perps) or right along the canal (meaning they may be trying to locate a candidate for drowning or they may be chasing a perp who’s lurking in or near the canal). In that case, it’s relatively safe on the surface streets here in the ’Hood. Maybe.

Dogwalk is mercifully uneventful. Most of the Five Ayem Horde are absent, presumably staying in because of the wet weather. Good. We cover a couple miles and return to the Funny Farm without getting rained upon, kidnapped by a fleeing desperado, or questioned by suspicious cops.

WonderAccountant, who kindly hired on to do the bookkeeping that I’m getting too senile to manage accurately, is supposed to come over today to tackle this month’s chore. Despite sleeping most of the night, I’m bushed (at 8:30 in the morning) and wish to go back to bed.

Ah: on the calendar: W.A. “early afternoon”…thank the heavens!

Yesterday it was off to a new Dental Type, blowing away the afternoon. Orthodontist…alas, not a candidate for New Dentist. She says the titanium stake in the upper jaw is NOT infected. Therefore the eye thing does not signal a more serious issue. Probably the injury that instigated the eye cyst was the slicing up of the nose to remove the suspected melanoma.

That’s something, anyway.

She recommended an actual dentist, not too far away. I may call that one and make an appointment to get acquainted. However, I’ve already established an acquaintance with the WonderAccountants’ dentist, who as far as I can tell is excellent.

The Baltimore dude who came out West and bought our beloved long-time dentist’s practice does not make the cut. Not by a long shot. Interestingly, when you look him up online locally, it appears that he’s opening a bunch of offices on the west side, apparently with the intention of recruiting low-income patients on welfare.

Is there a REASON why there’s never a dull moment around this place???????

Dental Insurance in Retirement…or No?

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Since retiring from my job at Arizona State University, I’ve gone bare when it comes to dental insurance. It’s a risk, obviously: betting on the “not come” rather than the “come.” My teeth have always been excellent. My mother died in her 60s; her mother died in her 40s, and her grandmother also died fairly young: hence, one could lay a bet that I will outlive my teeth.

I retired at about the same time a dear friend did. She and her husband chose not to enroll in the state’s plan for dental insurance. Why? Well….

The Arizona state dental plan doesn’t cover everything. For $8.52 a month, Cigna tells you you’re insured but actually covers very little; at $35 a month, the “premium” plan it actually covers things. Their fee schedule is so complicated that She Who Is Not an Accountant can’t even begin to figure it out, but it would appear the coverage doesn’t apply to everything. But following my friends’ logic, I chose not to sign up for Arizona’s retiree dental plan because my friends — one of whom was the head of the Arizona Department of Gaming, fairly large in the Bigwig Club — calculated that over a predictable lifetime, most of us would end up paying the same or more in insurance premiums than we would pay out of pocket for typical old-folks’ dental and orthodontic care (including extractions and all the other fun and games that come with decreptitude).

I’ve been retired since December 2009. So let’s start at January 2010… This is August 2022: about 12.6  years, hm?

At $8.52 a month, one year on Cigna’s low-rent plan would cost you $102.24. By now, I would have paid out around $1,288 for retiree dental insurance, on the cheap. But of course, you KNOW that if you really need dental insurance, that amount of coverage will be a drop in the bucket; so if you’re gonna buy the coverage, you’d better buy the top of the line. And that, by now, would have cost me $5,292.

AND not all dentists will accept the state’s insurance plan. Nor do those figures take into account services that would not be covered under the state’s plans. Also it’s worth noting that some of the stuff I’ve needed has been covered, to a degree, by Medicare and Medigap.

At this point, I’ve probably spent somewhere around a thousand bucks on the Adventures in Dental Science. So compared to the price of retiree insurance, probably the cost is six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. But I haven’t had to bicker with any providers. AND…it must be remembered that many providers will not accept the low-rent coverage one gets from the State of Arizona. So for the amount I’ve paid, I’ve retained my choice of providers. And that, it develops, is big.

Very big.

Also very big is the fact that not everything appears to be covered on the State’s plan, meaning that a fair amount of one’s Adventures in Dental Science are likely to be paid for out of pocket. How much might that be? Difficult to calculate. But even a small figure would cut in to the value of the premium-supported insurance scheme.

***

By now, I’d guess that over the past couple of years I’ve spent about the same as or a little more than I would have shelled out to Cigna for dental, what with the present Adventures in Medical Science. However, that may change as things get worse.

Or as they get better…

Our extended amalgamated family’s beloved dentist, Dr. D. was forced to retire for medical reasons. He sold his practice to a guy who moved here from Baltimore.

This fella has taken over and, as of course he should, is now doing things his way. Not Dr. D’s way. He’s canned all of Dr. D’s excellent dental assistants and office staff (or maybe they all fled?). And I see he’s building an empire of low-rent offices over on the West Side: exploiting the impoverished set.

I’ve now seen the guy several times. And truth to tell, I don’t like him. Nor do I trust him.

Evidently for good reason, come to find out.

He told me the stake another practitioner — an orthodontist specializing in rather eccentric restorative work — had installed in my upper jaw was infected. He would like to take that thing out and…what? Rebuild it? Put in a fake tooth? A bridge?? Argha!

Not to say…innaresting.

So…couple weeks ago I got a referral from another medical doctor to an orthodontist, who herself specializes in these sorts of shenanigans. Today, I finally got in to see her — coincidentally, on the first day the damn tooth hasn’t either hurt like hell or ached vaguely.

She shot a set of X-rays. Inspected them. Let her assistant inspect them, apparently by way of pedagogy but in fact putting another set of eyes on the scene.

Then she showed the X-rays to me and said, “Look. There’s no infection around this thing at all.”

“Why,” quoth I, “does it hurt?”

“Because,” quoth she, “the implant is too long. It’s grinding against your lower teeth. Especially when (as indeed is my habit) you clench your teeth.”

She picks up a handy-dandy little whizzer and, zzziiip! Drills off the upper surface of the crown.

And…

By damn! Now my jaws fit together straight! The teeth do not whack each other when I close my mouth. And the implant does NOT hurt.

So…uhm…howcum the Philadelphia Wonder didn’t notice that?

***

She fixed the damn thing in under ten minutes! Probably under five, actually: all she had to do was polish the excess porcelain off so that the fake tooth FIT, same as all all the other teeth in that part of the upper jaw.

The bill was a couple hundred bucks. A far cry from what I would have spent on Cigna’s dental insurance over the past twelve and a half years.

Unfortunately, she’s a specialist and so doesn’t do routine dental maintenance. But she gave me the name of a colleague, whom I intend to track down next week.