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Perception of Reality

This evening, just a few moments ago, Kyle and I had the shit scared out of us.

About a month ago, I suddenly began experiencing serious pain in my jaw, which turned out to be my way over-due wisdom teeth.  The next day I had a dentist appointment, and the day after that I got the bitches ripped out.  It was then that I learned that Vicodin is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.  (It makes me barf.)

Fast forward to today.  My mouth has healed, and feels fine.  (Though I still have holes in my gums in which ground beef tends to get stuck.)  I get a letter in the mail from the insurance company.  Normally I would say, “Oh, that’s nice of them,” and file it under Health Insurance, but I’m feeling responsible today so I open it.  I skim the first page, and it looks like it’s a breakdown of what they’re paying, blah, blah, blah.  Normally, this would be as far as I’d go, but for reasons I’m not sure of I continue to page 2, where it says that they’ve decided not to cover me.  Now, I don’t know a ton about the insurance biz and its inner workings, but I’m pretty sure that the insurance deciding not to cover me after a $1500 surgery is a bad thing.  Especially since the cost of a $1500 surgery is about how much we have at any given time.

So Kyle gets home and I tell him about it and he tells me that we need a particular piece of paper that proves that we signed me up for dental.  It’s a piece of paper that he handed to me last Wednesday while I was filing and told me to file it under Health Insurance, and I distinctly remember doing so.  But when I pull out the file, it’s not in there.  And that’s when things started to freak me out.

Not the missing paper part.  I mean, that did scare the piss out of me, ’cause this is a $1500 piece of paper we’re looking for.  But what scared me almost as much is the way that the longer we searched, the more I began to question my own memory.  I knew that I’d filed that paper, but if that’s true then the paper would be in the file, and since there was no tangible proof that I’d done what I’d thought I’d done, how do I know what I’d done?  Maybe I accidentally filed it somewhere ridiculous, like under pay stubs.  Maybe I, (god for-fucking-bid,) accidentally shredded it!  My mind began making up all kinds of plausible realities, and with the tiniest shred of proof I would have believed any one of them.  I could no longer trust my own mind to relay accurate information to me about my past actions, and I think that scared me more than the lost paper did.

We did find the stupid paper; turns out I had misfiled it, but in a not-so-ridiculous place.  And once I saw the end result I instantly remember the previous events and how it had come to be there.  At the risk of diving into the realm of too deep, I’ll say that it did make me think about reality, and the way that facts about reality are subject to the perception of those experiencing them.

And now I have to go.  A birthday present just appeared on my lap, accompanied by a very cute husband.  I must inspect this further.

UPDATE: Kyle got me a beautiful watch with a reversable black and brown band, and tomorrow he’s taking me out to dinner.  What can I say, I have an amazing husband!  (With fabulous taste in watches, I might add.)

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Mama Bee March 4, 2009, 1:07 am

    I *hate* those moments! Instead of Oprah’s “Ah ha!” moments, I like to call those “Oh Shit” or “Holy Fucking Crap” moments.

    But score on the cute present-giving hubbie! Does he give tutorials to other husbands? If so, how can I sign Mr. Bee up? 😉

  • Carrie March 5, 2009, 10:53 pm

    And now you know why I HATED losing things!

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