About a month and a half ago, a day before I left for Brown, I was playing a nice, relaxing game of pickup soccer. My old teammates were about to leave for their colleges for the start of their soccer seasons; it would our last game together for the year. We set up tables on their sides as goals and used our junk to mark the sidelines, the usual.
They played rather well, I played really well, it was a fun time…and then my tooth was killed. You see, due to the laws of physics two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time (as far as I know…..). Well, I went in for a hard tackle and it just so happened that my tooth was contesting someone’s skull for the same space. Quite regrettably, my tooth lost.
As my tooth was bullied backwards, a half moon of iron red formed around the gum line of said tooth; the game was momentarily paused for my injury. Welp, I had two options: wimp out and get my tooth checked or continue playing what would be my last game of soccer for the year with these treasured teammates. The choice was obvious; I pushed the tooth back into place (and it hurt like a fill in with your choice of word(s)) and kept playing.
I wanted to get it checked out…really I did, but I left for college the next day and never “settled down” for another month.
So fast forward two weeks of pain and wishing I could eat, I finally got around to seeing a dentist. From first sight with a bit of strong light, we could both tell my tooth was fractured and had been bleeding internally. After an x-ray, I was told my tooth was infected and needed a root canal whenever possible. Great.
I can’t believe my tooth went and died without my permission. Whatever.
Oh yeah, at that time I had just discovered that my insurance had no coverage out of state. So, here I am stressing out about getting a root canal in the middle of the semester while being buried alive in engineering homework regretting my decision to play soccer on that fateful day. “I’m too young to get a root canal, I’ve never needed any fixes, what awful luck,” I thought. It was that same day that the father of one of my teammates messaged me over facebook asking me about how my tooth was. Being glad that somebody cared, I told him about the diagnosis.
Immediately, he offered to help me; he took his time to call different companies and see if my insurance could be transferred in any way. In the end, this man asked his dentist for advice about my dilemma; his dentist offered to do a root canal for free on any day of my choosing if I was able to come back to town. Now I just had to find a way back.
Scheduling a flight was hard. A weekend trip (to avoid missing class) was expensive; a flight from the local TF Green airport was expensive. The convenient option didn’t seem to be available. Inevitably, I went to the Dean’s office to seek counsel (please please please do this if you need help or advice) and told them about my situation. Pretty much the next day, Brown had scheduled and paid for my flight leaving on Friday night and returning Sunday afternoon.
As I’m typing this, I’m on my flight back to Providence and feel great. I didn’t miss classes, didn’t pay a cent, got my root canal done, and even spent valuable time with friends in town. So what am I trying to say with this long boring story about my stupid dead tooth?
Please reach out. If you have unwelcomed situations and stress in your life, ask for help! There are always always always people who want to help you, you just have to ask to let them. I know I haven’t done a detailed blog about actual college life yet, but I really just wanted to make my blessings known. There are possibilities everywhere, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Because we’re first-gen, we have to make our own advantage; take advantage of resources and put yourself ahead.
Thanks for reading and God bless.