Toothy Updates: Hurry up and WAIT (and the laptop blues)
First things first, we are at $8,595.73 USD as of this moment. That's $280 less than we would have had, but I spent that on a trip to the ortho. More on that to follow. I want to thank everyone again for pitching to help. This will cover all of the braces with about $2k leftover to pitch at surgery. (If you have no idea what I'm blogging out, some friends of mine started a charity to help me with the insurmountable cost of getting my painful crossbite fixed.)

I just got off the phone with the orthognathic surgeon's office. I have a consultation scheduled for December 12 at noon. The waiting list is just that long. It'll be a $200 consultation fee.

I have lots of news to report from my most recent trip to the orthodontist.
1. I am sticking to the same guys in Raleigh because they have a good vibe, and nobody else got three recommendations from three separate sources. It's an hour away, but the checkups are once a month at the worst. I can handle it.
2. I might need surgery on my upper jaw as well, kicking the estimate from $10k to $20k if that is so.
3. For an additional $600, I can get Damon braces that might negate the need for and additional $10,000 worth of surgery.
4. I will be getting those Damon braces. (Damon braces are really cool, and they work more naturally with your teeth, sometimes requiring you to visit your ortho less often. But, they are ugly. They are all metal and very noticeable. I'm willing to pay extra and have metal on my teeth to get better results and possibly, maybe avoid ten thousand dollars of a twenty thousand dollar surgery bill.)
5. I have basic insurance with a company that has been known to cover this. Rarely. After my evaluation, the surgery people will pester my insurance to cover my claim. They will reject it on the first try, but maybe not on the second or third. But, even if the insurance company says yes now, the still might say no later. In that case, I will show up at their offices with a machete and no will to live. Just kidding. But it feels that way. If they reject my claim, two things happen:

a. I'm getting a different provider that actually has dental and vision (contrary to your logic. this surgery isn't covered by dental, which doesn't matter because they don't offer it).
b. We take this to Charlotte.

Why Charlotte? Because there's a surgeon there (who is much faster about seeing clients for evaluations) who, and I already checked this, would perform my lower jaw surgery in-house as an out-patient procedure for the low one-time cost of $10,000. And that's just the lower jaw! But, I'm in trouble if we have to do the upper, too, for even with the donation drive and my saving like a crazy person, there is just no freaking way I can cough up that kind of money.

I don't know how much it'll cost to do it here in Chapel Hill, but more than $10,000 if you factor in stupid hospital fees and things. It's such a pain.

The worst part of all this is that it's come time to replace my computer, Bruiser. He's just not keeping up with the multiple Adobe applications open at the same time and many megabytes of PSDs. And I would like a copy of CS4 when it hits the shelves. It is hard to process graphics for a living when your PC is choking on them. But, no matter how much I save for an upgraded system, I will never be able to part with that cash to buy it because deep down I will feel like I should hang onto it for the surgery.

I feel hobbled. It's utterly exasperating. I can't wait forever to get a new computer, but I can't buy one without feeling like I'm shortchanging my surgery savings. Other designers and web people get to upgrade, but I don't. I can't. But it's necessary. What do I do?