Say Aah!

Let's call a spade a spade. The Chinese are not world renowned for their great teeth, so when my upper molar on my left side started hurting about 4 days into our time in China I was not very excited.  I had done all my dental work  - cleanings, replacing silver fillings, etc. before we moved to avoid seeing the dentist here.  In the OC, my dentist, who was "OC Chinese" told me I should probably just plan to see her once a year when I came home for a visit.

As much as I tried to ignore the problem it just got worse and worse.  By the week anniversary of being here I was only chewing on the other side and was having constant pain in my face.  I had resolved to see a dentist - I couldn't live like this anymore.  I had gotten a magazine from the Shenzhen Women's International Club that had a couple of advertisements from Western doctors here in Shezhen.  The other option was to go to Hong Kong where there were lots of reputable english speaking dentists. That would have been a much more complicated undertaking timing wise so I decided to give one of those advertised dentists a shot.

The day I was going to make the dental appointment was that day last week that I went for a morning run - the notorious morning run of the lost phone incident.  So on top of the phone disappearance trauma, I had no telephone to call a dentist . Thankfully I posted about this dilemma on FaceBook and my friend Darin Rich suggested using wifi and Skype to call  the dentist - brilliant idea.

The dentists office could see me two days later.  The dentist was about 30 minutes from my home.  I lucked out and an office van was available to take me.  This was another time I was grateful for my ayi, because I could leave the kids home.  Dentist visit for yourself and two kids 3 and under doesn't mix well.

To my delight, the office was clean, modern and they were very accomodating. The office had a few different Chinese dentists and the dentise I was to see who was Australian.  I was glad to been seen by a native English speaker - some things you don't want to guess and pantomime with.

It turned out that I had a cavity. I had so much referred pain by the time I saw him that I thought they'd just have to pull all my teeth and start over - haha. The pain was much less after, but I still have some tooth sensitivity. I will go back next week if all hasn't calmed down.  Good thing is I'm no longer worried about seeing a dentist here.

Oh and did I mention my tooth getting fixed was the same day I went to the police station for my lost phone report... Victory photo (sorry about the half numb smile!)