Hospice Nurse Gets Really Pathetic Dental Bill

Being a sucker for nostalgia has its disadvantages around New Year. You are a sitting duck for all the retrospectives and the year-in-review photo montages. I’m just trying to read the news but I get ambushed by a tear-jerking video about all the standout individuals we lost in 2018, or all the ways women were awesome and broke glass ceilings. I have to stock up on extra Kleenex just to get through to the first of the year.

I was doing pretty well. I’m working most of the days around these holidays so I haven’t had much time for the retrospectives. But December 30th I put my back out riding, so I spent most of the day on my couch. Ice. Heat. Ibuprofen. Repeat. It was particularly bad timing given that I was hosting a New Year’s Eve party the next night and had to work all day first. But the worst of it was that I was fair game for every 2018 Lookback on the Internet. You could say I didn’t have to be online. I’m reading a really great book about Brunelleschi’s design of the dome for Florence’s cathedral. I could have just read my book.

So, in no particular order, the 18 best moments of 2018. Are you ready? Because this is my personal list, and it is culled from hours of not reading about Brunelleschi and his dome.

1. A woman in the UK gave birth after carrying her baby in a transplanted uterus. 
2. We heard what the Sun sounds like. Actually, I haven’t heard it yet. Is it very quiet?
3. NASA’s InSight Lander took a selfie on Mars.
4. Mexico sold a $218.7m presidential plane and gave the money to the poor.
5. Researchers developed a 10-minute cancer test.
6. An Ebola treatment trial began.
7. We discovered 157 new species in Southeast Asia. (That’s “we” as in “someone else.”)
8. Scientists came up with an idea to stop glaciers from melting.
9. North and South Korea marched under one flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
10. Scientists discovered a plastic-eating enzyme.
11. A ghost particle that travelled 3.7 billion light years was found on Earth. (WTF?)
12. For the second time in history, a human-made object reached interstellar space.
13. A new peanut allergy drug was developed.
14. Saudi women got behind the wheel.
15. Ireland repealed its abortion ban.
16. India’s Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex.
17. Iranian women were allowed to attend men’s sporting events.
18. Bump stock ban. I know. America’s contribution: seriously?!

Despite all of these heartwarming events and developments, it was a bit hard going back to work today. The streets were nice and empty, because pretty much everyone else in the world was not going back to work, but enjoying the so-called Sunday afternoon of the year. Mine had been rudely interrupted by the necessity to return to work. People don’t quit dying just because it’s the Sunday afternoon of the year.

So I was driving through the quiet sunny streets of Fairfax, feeing unabashadly sorry for myself, and I spotted a big gang of road bikers rolling out from the Good Earth parking lot. Now I was feeling really sorry for myself. Why could I not be rolling out of the Good Earth parking lot instead of driving off to see someone with day/night reversal? I pulled in to the post office to pick up my mail and I remember muttering to myself as I cut the engine Could something nice maybe happen to me today? Classic self-pity line, complete with emphasis on the nice. 

In the pile of mail were two letters from Kaiser and one from my dental insurance. Now that is not a good sign even on a day when I’m not in a self-pity spiral. I opened the dental insurance one first to get the really bad news over. My last bill from them was $4200 after insurance paid. This one? $10.50. I scoff at such a bill! I tossed it on the back seat to show my contempt at them not being able to bill me more than eleven dollars for a periodontal exam.

Then I opened the Kaiser letters. The first one informed me that I do not have one type of cancer, and the second that I do not have another. It’s a good day when you find out that you are free of not just one but two kinds of cancer. Someone in the world was undoubtedly not so lucky today. Someone somewhere probably opened a letter with a very different kind of news.

On top of my happy letters, there was a Christmas card from my eldest brother. It was a picture of Santa’s sleigh high above some glittery winter trees. Inside he had scrawled in his very distinctive scrawl Here’s Santa showing Brits how it should be done. (He lives in England.) Rather than throwing the toys out of the pram, put them in the sleigh and leave the North Pole! Norexit! Easy! That gave me a laugh that firmly extracted me from my self-pity-spiral.

Plus I had encountered a local guy in the post office who lives on his bike with his possessions in a backpack and couch surfs his way around the town. We exchanged new year greetings and he asked me what I did for work. I listened to how his aunt just died on hospice. He was opening a letter from the Sierra Club and told me he spends a lot of time writing letters for them, but that it is not paid work so he needs to ask for donations to survive. I was happy to donate to his survival. I see him at all hours of the day and night in his all-weather gear pedalling his bike slowly around town. 

An opportunity for grace, three happy letters, and a card from my bro: maybe 2019 really is going to be better than 2018! And next year, I’ll be able to list my favorite nineteen great moments. My dental bill for $10.50 just might be one of them.