By the Skin of My Teeth
Having spent about three months and called maybe 20 offices looking for a endodontist who takes Medicaid for my messed up lower left molar, I ended up with one place that takes it but its online rating isn't... great. However, the complaints were mostly about really long waits in the office and rude, unhelpful front desk/admin people, and I can handle the first and spent three months dealing with their mostly crappy secretaries, so.... They also want a $75 fee for one of the tests, but didn't make me pay at the office so either they won't charge it or they'll send me a bill. Probably the second. Anyway, after months of not answering the phone or not returning my messages or secretaries giving me varying information, I called on a whim at 4 pm on Friday the 13th, immediately got a human on the phone, and got an appointment for the 17th at 10 am. I was stunned by the speed of it.
MTA's Trip Planner gave me a route where I might've ended up further from my destination than I did by getting off at Cortlandt Street station because the R just sat there for ages while I needed to get to the office by a certain time. I got out of the station in the World Trade Center area, which confused me the last time I wandered around there looking for a Medicaid office in November 2019 too. Then, as Tuesday, something in the area confused my iPhone's Map/GPS, which gave me nonsense directions. If not for my night drives giving me some idea of local landmarks, I might've been forced to call the office and hope to get a human being on the phone who could help me, something I couldn't depend on. I'm pretty good with uptown Manhattan but downtown, below the grid, can be confusing.
Turns out the office is in the Transportation Building, near City Hall, Saint Paul's Cemetery, and what used to be J&R Music and Computer World. My appointment was for 10 am, and I made it with a few minutes to spare. I brought my usual dentist's X-rays of my whole mouth and the tooth with me on a zip drive, but the front desk woman didn't want to risk it so I e-mailed the X-rays a few times until she got both. (She said they have terrible reception in her part of the floor, and she was correct.)
After filling out a stack of paperwork and waiting a while, I was brought in to get an X-ray of the tooth. After all that e-mailing I did to give them one already, I was a bit annoyed but okay. It turned out that she didn't X-ray the proper tooth because she didn't realize I had the wisdom tooth removed so the bad tooth, #18, is the last tooth on that side. She asked me if I had my wisdom teeth taken out after she did the X-ray and then didn't learn from that. So I had to do it again. ~sigh~ The endodontist was kind of "...really?!" about that at her and I concurred. He said he would test the nerves with an instrument and I might feel a tingle. I felt a jolt of pain on his first attempt. So, yeah, it definitely needs to be done. He asked if I grind my teeth since the interior is somewhat calcified, I told him I clench not grind. Since this is Medicaid, it'll take a while to see if this gets approved or not, so I was told to call the office back in a month to see how it's going. Good times. It's a start at least.
It was a gray, humid day and I felt a bit crappy so I didn't walk around as much afterward as I usually would. I did visit the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building--renamed in 2015 and originally named the Municipal Building and later known as the Manhattan Municipal Building--which I've wanted to see as more than a drive-by for a while. Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the building was among the last erected as part of the City Beautiful movement in New York. It'd probably look much nicer and less gray on a sunny day. Much of it is highly decorated in a style I enjoy but damn does it feel heavy. The top includes the gilded Civic Fame statue. (Her face is a crime though.)
Nearby is Surrogate's Courthouse, and here are some of its statues.
I got back on the subway at the subway entrance in the Dinkins Municipal Building, and this time MTA Trip Planner didn't fail me. I took the 5 train to the Lexington Av-59th Street station, where I picked up the R to take me to my home station. (Then a bus, then a block walk.) Not being on a time limit this time, I could better appreciate the mosaics in one part of the Lexington Av-59th Street station. These photos are of a portion of them. They're a bit washed out in these images and don't reproduce how they seem to just about glow in person.
By the time I made it home I was tired and starving, so I hopped into my car and went to a White Castle on Northern Boulevard, which made me double hamburgers and a small order of onion rings so fresh and delicious that I abandoned all decorum and devoured them. Didn't wait to get home. Applied ketchup to the burgers while stopped at red lights and went to town. Sometimes it's the little things that make life worthwhile. You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.
MTA's Trip Planner gave me a route where I might've ended up further from my destination than I did by getting off at Cortlandt Street station because the R just sat there for ages while I needed to get to the office by a certain time. I got out of the station in the World Trade Center area, which confused me the last time I wandered around there looking for a Medicaid office in November 2019 too. Then, as Tuesday, something in the area confused my iPhone's Map/GPS, which gave me nonsense directions. If not for my night drives giving me some idea of local landmarks, I might've been forced to call the office and hope to get a human being on the phone who could help me, something I couldn't depend on. I'm pretty good with uptown Manhattan but downtown, below the grid, can be confusing.
Turns out the office is in the Transportation Building, near City Hall, Saint Paul's Cemetery, and what used to be J&R Music and Computer World. My appointment was for 10 am, and I made it with a few minutes to spare. I brought my usual dentist's X-rays of my whole mouth and the tooth with me on a zip drive, but the front desk woman didn't want to risk it so I e-mailed the X-rays a few times until she got both. (She said they have terrible reception in her part of the floor, and she was correct.)
After filling out a stack of paperwork and waiting a while, I was brought in to get an X-ray of the tooth. After all that e-mailing I did to give them one already, I was a bit annoyed but okay. It turned out that she didn't X-ray the proper tooth because she didn't realize I had the wisdom tooth removed so the bad tooth, #18, is the last tooth on that side. She asked me if I had my wisdom teeth taken out after she did the X-ray and then didn't learn from that. So I had to do it again. ~sigh~ The endodontist was kind of "...really?!" about that at her and I concurred. He said he would test the nerves with an instrument and I might feel a tingle. I felt a jolt of pain on his first attempt. So, yeah, it definitely needs to be done. He asked if I grind my teeth since the interior is somewhat calcified, I told him I clench not grind. Since this is Medicaid, it'll take a while to see if this gets approved or not, so I was told to call the office back in a month to see how it's going. Good times. It's a start at least.
It was a gray, humid day and I felt a bit crappy so I didn't walk around as much afterward as I usually would. I did visit the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building--renamed in 2015 and originally named the Municipal Building and later known as the Manhattan Municipal Building--which I've wanted to see as more than a drive-by for a while. Designed by McKim, Mead & White, the building was among the last erected as part of the City Beautiful movement in New York. It'd probably look much nicer and less gray on a sunny day. Much of it is highly decorated in a style I enjoy but damn does it feel heavy. The top includes the gilded Civic Fame statue. (Her face is a crime though.)
Nearby is Surrogate's Courthouse, and here are some of its statues.
I got back on the subway at the subway entrance in the Dinkins Municipal Building, and this time MTA Trip Planner didn't fail me. I took the 5 train to the Lexington Av-59th Street station, where I picked up the R to take me to my home station. (Then a bus, then a block walk.) Not being on a time limit this time, I could better appreciate the mosaics in one part of the Lexington Av-59th Street station. These photos are of a portion of them. They're a bit washed out in these images and don't reproduce how they seem to just about glow in person.
By the time I made it home I was tired and starving, so I hopped into my car and went to a White Castle on Northern Boulevard, which made me double hamburgers and a small order of onion rings so fresh and delicious that I abandoned all decorum and devoured them. Didn't wait to get home. Applied ketchup to the burgers while stopped at red lights and went to town. Sometimes it's the little things that make life worthwhile. You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.