Suffer, Wander
Posted to DW Saturday 2/26/22:
I called the dental clinic Wednesday because I was still experiencing pain, now also in my ear and neck, and was told to come in as a walk-in the next morning before 8:30 am. After suffering through a subway ride with multiple vectors of delay, including one where the conductor made us get off the train and wait for the next one, I made it in the cold to the clinic with 10 minutes to spare and waited with some other people. What the woman on the telephone didn't tell me was that the first six people to arrive got a number to see a dentist that morning but the next six of us had to get a number to come back at 1 pm, about four hours later. They didn't care I came all the way there from Queens. I didn't see the point in spending the money and spoons to take the subway back to Queens and then return to Harlem, so....
But it was far too cold and windy to hang around anywhere outside. I had no idea what to do with myself that far uptown, so I took a bus to Midtown. The window displays were the same as the ones I shot a week ago, on the 19th, so no joy there. When I stopped at a Barnes & Noble, I found out that the only seats there were roped off and reserved for cafe customers and there were signs warning you not to sit on the floor or the bottoms of the windows. Their restrooms were also reserved for paying customers only and you'd need to show an attendant a receipt to get in. A sign advised that there were restrooms at Bryant Park and Grand Central Stations, several blocks away.
I've never tried the ones at Bryant Park--there was often a line--and Grand Central had a lot of seating in its Dining Concourse downstairs. At least, it had; now a lot of the seating had been removed and the rest was blocked off for customers paying for food or drinks or a train ticket. An announcement warned us not to sit on the floor or stairs. But at least I didn't have to pay anything to use their restrooms!
(Not that I could eat since I didn't have a brush and paste to brush my teeth and refused to buy any.)
A lot of the cheaper places in the whole area are gone, leaving bougie businesses charging prices for food and drinks I refuse to pay.
This is not making me want to spend any time in Manhattan, Mayor Adams. At all. Is this what the pandemic and the "move the homeless along" push are going to let businesses do?
(Plus, the continuing assaults and robberies in the subway. Like one poor unfortunate who was recently sent down a flight of stairs, struck repeatedly with a hammer, and robbed. I kept more distance from the edge while waiting for trains.)
Desperately needing to find a place to rest, I sat on a bench at Pershing Square but the biting wind and cold quickly drove me away.
I ended up getting on a 6 train around 12:10 pm just to have a warm place to sit and walked back into the clinic at about 12:30 pm to get that in their waiting room. Fortunately, they had a working water fountain there too so I could drink something for the first time since 6:45 am.
At about 1:45 they put me in a chair, asked me questions, did some X-rays, examined me, and decided to pare down the top of the filling somewhat to try to take care of the pain problems. If that doesn't work, they might remove the filling and put something medicated in. If that doesn't work, then root canal. For each of those next steps, I'd have to do the walk-in thing again, and I do not want to do this crap again. They really don't want to do a root canal if they can find an excuse to avoid it, and I don't know if that's about saving me pain or avoiding trying to get Medicaid to agree to pay them to do it. Hope this paring down works!
But I don't know yet, because their work has abraded my gums near the tooth so badly that there's currently a big, open sore there that's causing me a lot of pain, so I need that to heal before I can figure out what's going on with the tooth itself.
When I got home Thursday, I slept for seven hours, woke up for four hours, then went back to bed. I woke up with my shoulders and arms hurting from walking around and standing with a purse and heavy bag on them for hours.
I called the dental clinic Wednesday because I was still experiencing pain, now also in my ear and neck, and was told to come in as a walk-in the next morning before 8:30 am. After suffering through a subway ride with multiple vectors of delay, including one where the conductor made us get off the train and wait for the next one, I made it in the cold to the clinic with 10 minutes to spare and waited with some other people. What the woman on the telephone didn't tell me was that the first six people to arrive got a number to see a dentist that morning but the next six of us had to get a number to come back at 1 pm, about four hours later. They didn't care I came all the way there from Queens. I didn't see the point in spending the money and spoons to take the subway back to Queens and then return to Harlem, so....
But it was far too cold and windy to hang around anywhere outside. I had no idea what to do with myself that far uptown, so I took a bus to Midtown. The window displays were the same as the ones I shot a week ago, on the 19th, so no joy there. When I stopped at a Barnes & Noble, I found out that the only seats there were roped off and reserved for cafe customers and there were signs warning you not to sit on the floor or the bottoms of the windows. Their restrooms were also reserved for paying customers only and you'd need to show an attendant a receipt to get in. A sign advised that there were restrooms at Bryant Park and Grand Central Stations, several blocks away.
I've never tried the ones at Bryant Park--there was often a line--and Grand Central had a lot of seating in its Dining Concourse downstairs. At least, it had; now a lot of the seating had been removed and the rest was blocked off for customers paying for food or drinks or a train ticket. An announcement warned us not to sit on the floor or stairs. But at least I didn't have to pay anything to use their restrooms!
(Not that I could eat since I didn't have a brush and paste to brush my teeth and refused to buy any.)
A lot of the cheaper places in the whole area are gone, leaving bougie businesses charging prices for food and drinks I refuse to pay.
This is not making me want to spend any time in Manhattan, Mayor Adams. At all. Is this what the pandemic and the "move the homeless along" push are going to let businesses do?
(Plus, the continuing assaults and robberies in the subway. Like one poor unfortunate who was recently sent down a flight of stairs, struck repeatedly with a hammer, and robbed. I kept more distance from the edge while waiting for trains.)
Desperately needing to find a place to rest, I sat on a bench at Pershing Square but the biting wind and cold quickly drove me away.
I ended up getting on a 6 train around 12:10 pm just to have a warm place to sit and walked back into the clinic at about 12:30 pm to get that in their waiting room. Fortunately, they had a working water fountain there too so I could drink something for the first time since 6:45 am.
At about 1:45 they put me in a chair, asked me questions, did some X-rays, examined me, and decided to pare down the top of the filling somewhat to try to take care of the pain problems. If that doesn't work, they might remove the filling and put something medicated in. If that doesn't work, then root canal. For each of those next steps, I'd have to do the walk-in thing again, and I do not want to do this crap again. They really don't want to do a root canal if they can find an excuse to avoid it, and I don't know if that's about saving me pain or avoiding trying to get Medicaid to agree to pay them to do it. Hope this paring down works!
But I don't know yet, because their work has abraded my gums near the tooth so badly that there's currently a big, open sore there that's causing me a lot of pain, so I need that to heal before I can figure out what's going on with the tooth itself.
When I got home Thursday, I slept for seven hours, woke up for four hours, then went back to bed. I woke up with my shoulders and arms hurting from walking around and standing with a purse and heavy bag on them for hours.