Lair of the sea serpent -Elihu Vedder (1899)[Lair of the Sea Serpent -Elihu Vedder (1899)]

I started to feel more depressed last week, after I heard about police in Baton Rouge & Minnesota killing unarmed black men, then of the black shooter in Dallas killing 5 cops & firing on other people in the Black Lives Matter march there.

My situation in my new home is much better than it was a month ago. Our landlord lowered our rent to under $ 420/month & didn’t charge us pet deposits. The one guy roommate who was worrying the other woman & me is behaving more normally, so we’re more comfortable with him being here. The landlord let us decide if he could stay or not, & since he’d been behaving ok, we said it’s ok if he stays. As long as he takes his medication & doesn’t act psychotic again, I think we’ll be ok with him here.

I’ve had a bad toothache, which turned out to be from a cavity in an impacted left wisdom tooth. Once I got on antibiotics & acetaminophen, the swelling went down & the pain stopped, but the tooth still needs to be removed. At one point, after I’d finished a week of antibiotics but was still waiting for a second dentist appointment, the infection came back so bad that I drove myself to a hospital emergency room & almost fainted there. The emergency room doctor gave me enough antibiotics to take twice a day for a week, rather than 3 times/ day like I’d taken before. Since I have a biology background, I know that’s not a good way to treat a bacterial infection. I took it 3 times/ day, went to my second dentist appointment & got the dentist to prescribe more antibiotic, so I could continue to take it 3 times / day for the rest of the week. This second infection went down a few days ago, so I reserved 4 days worth of antibiotic (after taking it for 8 days), in case the infection comes back again before I can get the tooth removed.

If you live in a more enlightened country than the United States, you may not understand how fucked up our medical care system is for those who are poor. I’ve been on Medi-Cal (medical insurance for the poor in California) since May & had EBT (food assistance) since March. If I had sought this aid 2 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have lost my home & almost all my possessions, because I would’ve been able to contribute more to our household expenses. I didn’t know how to get it though & was plagued with serious depression that hindered me from seeking the help I needed. As a formerly middle-class, college-educated white woman, I also had a stupid resistance to seeking public assistance. Now I know better.

Anyway, with Medi-Cal, a person can get only limited dental work done, but that’s still better than nothing. I can get X-rays taken & simple filings, but can’t get work done below my gums, such as a root canal. I can get a bad tooth removed, & since my bad tooth is one that I don’t need for chewing anyway, that’s what I want to have done. My problem now is the bureaucracy & waiting times to get work done. My dentist requested a dental surgeon to remove the tooth, but the request has to go through Medi-Cal & they haven’t called me back with a suggested surgeon & appointment time. I have to wait still longer, in which time the infection could come back. Since I don’t want to have to drive to an emergency room when I’m about to faint, I’m keeping a few antibiotics on hand in case I get sick again.

Meanwhile I’m not looking for work, because I don’t know when I’m going to be scheduled for more dental appointments & because I’ve been feeling anxious & depressed. I need to start seeing a mental health therapist, but I have to make an appointment with a medical doctor first, & I don’t want that to conflict with my dental appointments.

Probably because of all this, I’ve started having suicidal thoughts again. First I was feeling like I don’t belong where I am. Then I felt like I’m too emotionally dependent on the other woman roommate here, wanting her to be my friend instead of going out & trying to make new friends or being able to be strong on my own. I started thinking I should leave the little bit of money I have in savings to my ex-roommate who made me homeless, then kill myself. I know this isn’t rational thinking. I was just feeling scared & very emotionally alone. I heard about an anxiety treatment center that might have a sliding rate scale for poor people, but I don’t know for sure if they have a payment program I can use. What I do know is that online peer support groups are practically useless for serious depression with suicidal ideation. (They don’t want posters to mention suicidal thoughts in case it triggers someone else.)

I talked with the other woman roommate yesterday & vented to her about feeling upset. I told her the guy roommate had used my cell phone when I’m waiting for a call about the dental surgeon & that the bread I bought for sandwiches went missing. I didn’t think the guy roommate was in the house, but he overheard me & apologized for using my phone. Later, she & I were watching a survival reality show in which 2 women were being kind of bitchy to a lone man, & we thought maybe we were being a bit like that to our guy roommate. It’s so easy to develop an us vs. them mentality in group dynamics, but it’s hardly ever that simple. As I said the other day, none of us is perfect & we’re all a little broken in this house. We all have various levels of anxiety, depression & social ineptitude, but we have to work together to get along & survive.

4 thoughts on “Bad Tooth & Feeling Depressed again”

  1. Sounds scary about your roommate going psychotic…did he get violent or something?
    We have mostly socialized health care here, but it’s a kind of hybrid and dental health isn’t included. So going to the dentist is quite expensive here too, much more expensive if you have holes (last time they charged me by the hole) or if you have other stuff you need to have done. Prices might still not compare to american prices, though.
    Hope you get it fixed quickly, sounds intense

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  2. My tooth isn’t hurting now, so the antibiotics must have worked. I still need to get the bad tooth removed, but I’m hesitating on making phone calls about it.

    Our male roommate had 2 episodes that resulted in the police being called. The first was when he went outside & was ranting incoherently, partly about being a werewolf. At that time, the other woman roommate & I locked him out of the house & called the police, who took him away & had him placed in a mental hospital for 24 hours.

    The second time he acted aggressively toward a homeless woman I was trying to help get assistance. He asked me to take him to the hospital right after that, which I did. He later called me to pick him up after he’d been discharged & had wandered off & gotten lost. I told him I was busy & didn’t pick him up. Then the other roommate & I went out to dinner & a movie with her friend, because we didn’t want to be at the house when our male roommate came home. When we got home after midnight, we found that one neighbor had called the fire department when he had started a small fire in our backyard at night & the family on the other side had called the police after he entered their garage, tossed things about & then went into their backyard with a pillow & blanket, apparently paranoid. They were scared because they have young children & he was acting scary on their property.

    We still don’t know why he had these episodes, if he had a schizophrenic episode from not taking his medication or if he’d taken some other drugs. He’s been more nearly “normal” lately, though, & hasn’t been acting scary.

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  3. oh 😦 that’s scary and sad. I do think he should be living in a more…specialized environment until he becomes more stable and can live on his own, or with other people. He seems a danger to himself and others. But if he’s gotten better then that’s great. hoping it doesn’t resume.

    Do what I do when I have to make calls I don’t want to, drink some alcohol and then do it!
    …ok so that’s a terrible idea, don’t do that

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