If you’ve ever wrestled with a medical bill, this post is for you.

One of the super fun things about my special snowflakiness is the ridiculous medical bills I get.

To keep from totally descending into utter despair when I review medical bills, I keep a running list of Favorite Medical Costs. The list consists of things so absurd that I can’t help but find them funny. Yes, I’m aware I have a warped sense of humor, but I maintain that humor is the key to survival!

Today I’m going to share my current top two on the list.

The most recent addition spawned the title of this post. I needed to have a test. This always makes me cringe because my deductible is the size of Texas, so I know that almost any test will have to come out of my pocket. Like a good adult, I phoned ahead to get a quote.

The first ridiculous thing was that the test was over $1000. For a test. Not surgery. Just the test. Even the doctor who ordered the test was like WTF? So, already, the cost was ridiculous enough to earn this a spot on the list.

But the thing that moved it to the top of the list was this part: the cost was $1072 . . . and 8 cents.

Cuz, ya know, over a grand wasn’t enough. They really needed to tack on that extra 8 cents.

It’s hilarious if you think about it long enough.

However, the winner of the list, which I don’t see how anyone is ever going to top, is a whole other level of humor.

When I first got sick, there were a million bills coming in. And, like a good adult, I put them all in a spreadsheet so I could keep track of them. I had this one weird bill show up that I couldn’t figure out, so I called the billing department. The nice lady looked up the charge and read the description.

“It was for a paresthesia test.”

“What’s that?”

She didn’t know either, so she looked it up. “It’s the test for the burning skin.”

I was stumped. Of all the things wrong with me, this was not one of them. “I don’t have burning skin.”

We’d been brainstorming ideas for a few minutes trying to figure it out, when my mind hit on something she said.

“Wait,” I said. “It’s a skin test?”

“Yes.”

“YOU MEAN THE TIME HE POKED ME WITH A PEN?”

I’d been at a neurologist’s office, and they do this thing where they poke you with a pin in different places to see if you can feel it. Well, at this particular appointment with this particular dude, he didn’t feel a full pin test was necessary, I guess, because he whipped the pen out of his shirt pocket, poked me once with it and said, “Can you feel that?” I said yes, and we moved on.

Yup. I got charged for being poked with a pen.

I can’t even. It’s so bad I have to laugh.

And the best part?

They didn’t just charge me $77, which I feel is exorbitant on its own for a pen poke. Oh no.

They charged me $77 . . . and 38 cents.

I mean, c’mon. What can you do but laugh?