Despite what the dentist in Chicago said it turns out I do have a cavity. How do I know? My tooth broke. And I'm in China. Just what I was trying to avoid. Luckily another teacher at work has been seeing a dentist that speaks nearly perfect English. I finally stopped putting it off and went to see him.
It's pretty much what you would expect to find in China. The man that looked at my tooth wasn't the same guy that filled my tooth. He explained to the cavity filler what I needed. I didn't get any Novocaine - and yes, there was drilling. The drilling started to hurt a bit so I told him and he stopped. I'm not sure if he was finished. He filled the tooth and said I was done. I paid 100 of my 300 RMB bill (43USD) and was almost on my way. Then the English speaking dentist asked if it felt even or if one side was higher than the other. The side he worked on was totally higher than the other. So back in the chair. The dentist came back over and filed it down. It was just a short procedure this time so he decided he didn't need to put a bib on me or put gloves on. His hand was only going to be in my mouth for a minute - how dirty could that really be. Gotta love China.
UPDATE: My filling came out! I had to go back to the dentist. This time they did some more serious drilling - without novocaine - to make my cavity bigger so the filling would stay in. The dentist said the pain would be manageable while they were drilling. That is sure not the attitude of dentists back home. Usually they say there will be no pain. But I'm not at home and hopefully this filling stays in because I definitely don't want to go back.
There were a couple differences I noticed but one difference that was interesting was that they don't have one of those suctiony things to put in your mouth while they're working on you. I had to keep spitting in the little sink. It was pretty inconvenient. It doesn't seem like a dentist without them suctioning all your spit out for you.
1 comment:
OUCH! You are a brave soul! I would have been back in the US, just for the Novocaine!!
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