foxsaliant

Weekly Update (2020/12/07)

Added 2020-12-08 00:30:19 +0000 UTC

Hey everyone.

It’s been a rough week for me. There’s been a lot of ups and downs and I’m frankly emotionally exhausted by all of it.

First the bad.

On Thursday I went in for a dentist’s visit so that I could get fitted for the dentures I’d taken impressions for and afterwards I was informed that not only had my dental insurance dropped my dentist's office, but they were also not communicative and were refusing to pay (or just... not saying anything) about the out of network co-pay.

They apparently gave my dentist's office a week's notice that they were doing this, which is shitty, but my dentist's office didn't inform me until I'd already gotten fillings and the impressions for my dentures the week before which was a full month after this had apparently happened, which is also shitty.

Both parties were supposed to send me a letter about this, something I haven't received from either of them. This is on top of me not being able to access anything through the dental insurance company’s website.

My insurance company is basically pretending I don't exist (and has in the past, because I'm through a Healthcare Market Place plan and not directly through them) and my dentist's office basically rammed me through three procedures in short order to get as much ran up on my tab as possible before I realized that my insurance wouldn't cover it and dropped them. I wasn't even billed during one of my extractions for the visit, they just said I could do it next time (which the insurance company did cover that one, oddly enough, despite being in October.)

So basically, I'm currently stuck with $2350 worth of dental bills, with a fitting left to do on the 16th (which I'll probably not end up going through with) and five more extractions and a top denture (which are probably going to have to wait until this mess is all sorted out and probably be with a different dentist.)

Apparently, according to my roommate’s co-workers, this isn't the first time my insurance company, nor the dentist’s office that I’m going through have pulled this shit, including in relation with one another.

We paid $200 already, and we can wipe the bill, it'll just nuke our savings for the time being. If I can harangue my insurance company into taking a chunk out of it, that's great. I've got to check the office and make sure I absolutely didn't receive any letters from either of them (though I don’t believe I did.) Then I have to call my insurance company, find out who to go through to talk about my policy, and then browbeat them into paying the Out of Network compensation. Once that's done, I can figure out who IS in the network and find a more trustworthy dental partnership.

The thing that pisses me off the most is that I waited for a year and a half paying off my insurance, and found an in network doctor SPECIFICALLY to avoid this situation. If I was going to pay out of pocket, I could have literally done that with a credit card THREE YEARS AGO.

It was very upsetting and I’m still immensely irritated about it, but I’ll get things sorted out. I need to call people and my dentist’s office can fucking wait.

Then, once I was getting over that, on Sunday morning my dad called me to inform me that my grandmother (his mom) had passed away in her sleep that night.

I’m… not as upset as I might be over it. We had a good relationship, even if we weren’t super close, and she went at home in her sleep at the age of 92, so… it’s how she wanted things. And to make it that long is pretty good. Like, you can’t really ask for more than that.

So I talked to my dad and we just had a bit of reminiscing that day. There won’t be a funeral or any big hullabaloo about it and I won’t be travelling out to do anything. It was just… kind of morose.

I’m also a bit concerned about two of my friends, who are both sick right now, one with issues due to chronic asthma and an upper respiratory infection, and the other who came down with bacterial pneumonia suddenly a few days ago.

The first is Kat Ozkosar, who is a fantastic artist and a lovely person. She works on a few different things, the main one being her comic Afraid of Monsters, which I hope you’ll go check out, as well as being one of the storyboarders and comickers involved on WildCard.

If you like her stuff, please check out her SubscribeStar page and show her some love. She’s been getting kind of run down as of late and lost her voice a couple weeks back due to chronic sickness, so every little bit helps.

The other is my good friend, Norithics, who draws a lot of commission work and various other adult cartoons. He has his own furry sci-fi adventure novel, Partners 2541, which is really good and I implore you to check it out. He has a Patreon, as well, so if you like his stuff, go and give him some love, too. He came down with bacterial pneumonia yesterday suddenly, so he and his husband are going to need a bit of cash to cover a few things as well as a bit of a cushion for the extra food and medicine as he convalesces.

A mutual friend of ours, Carmine, is doing a little fundraising stream tomorrow, so if you’re interested, you can check that out over on Carmine’s twitch channel at 5:30 PM CST!

So yeah, I’m exhausted and worried about my friends. I’m kind of emotionally spent in general, but, on the bright side I did get another Clara comic done and waiting in the wings for when it’s time to finally launch that project, and I was able to reconnect with an old friend on Saturday whom I hadn’t talked to in a few years, so that was nice and brightened things up a bit.

The commission slots went well, too, so my domain and hosting is covered for another year easily, and I’ll be working on those soon, so they won’t be sitting around for months. Things are looking up, I’m just… really tired, emotionally.

In addition to the other expenditures, I’m going to be putting together another workstation, which means computer parts. I’ve got a few things, like a power supply, monitor, a basic video card and that. I just need to get the other parts, maybe a better card, a battery and a new drawing tablet, so I’ve got a shopping list I need to make up.

I’m also planning on getting a printer that can do stickers, and seeing about making some more merchandise, maybe not going through RedBubble but something I could send out myself. I hope you all would like that! We’ll see what happens, though.

So yeah, that’s what’s going on. Just a lot of… stuff, and it’s all a bit much to take, but I’ll be okay. Just have to do one thing at a time.

I hope your holidays are doing well, wherever you are and I’ll see you all next week.

Take care of yourselves.

~Spooky

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A Special Thanks goes out to this month's Fanclub Foxes, MechaGhost2003, Kithpine, Norithics, Gunslinger Dragon, Chacumera, and Chris Brown for their support! If you want to help us stay fed and invest towards some cool projects in the future like more Various Happenings, consider checking us out over on Patreon and SubscribeStar.