Sometimes I look around and think “how did I seriously get here?” or even “is this actually really happening to me?” And I don’t mean that ecstatic exclamation people make when they’re chosen for The Price is Right or what girls say in romantic comedies when they’re so in love. I mean, like seriously. For example, today.
Last January I had some major tooth pains and come to find out, I needed a root canal and I had no insurance. The awesome part of this actually does not exist. So I applied for Care Credit and had the root canal preformed and instead of putting the crown on my tooth then, I had the dentist just fill it like a cavity or something like that. Apparently this is pretty common when people don’t have insurance and are paying out of pocket. The root canal costs like $1000 and the crown is about that much as well. But you need to make sure you get the crown within a year. I went for this option because I thought that by the end of the year I would actually have grown up enough (mentally at least) to get a real job. Apparently I’m a dreamer.
So fast forward 10 months and I’m in Mexico. I’d be lying if I was to say that inexpensive dental care wasn’t a draw for me relocating to Mexico, at least temporarily. I was fully aware that I still needed that crown (and the tooth has started occasionally hurting now) and I had a few other issues.
Which brings us to today.
Let me set the scene for you. Please sit back and relax and try to let your imagination fill in where my abilities as a writer and storyteller fail me. Alan and I park on the street and I see a sign for a dental office. We get out of the car and I start walking towards that building. However, I am informed I am going the wrong way. I am instead directed to the apartment complex behind the dental building. Maybe we’re picking up Alan’s mom? Is this where she’s living? As we walk up the flight of stairs I ask him if this is where his mother’s husband’s dental office is. I am informed that since they live in Mexico City now during the week and only come to Cuernavaca for the weekends, Jorge no longer has a regular office. OK. Yeah, makes since. I guess... Then we open the door. The living room looks just like a living room. Two couches, a coffee table in between, a flat screen television, a stereo, you know, normal. And then I look to the right of that and, where I can only assume the dining room table should be, sits a dentist chair. And if I look directly to my right, there’s the kitchen. Oh look, a microwave. Yep. So I sit down on my thrown and Alan starts talking to Jorge in Spanish. Yeah, he doesn’t know much English. So he looks at my teeth and sees the problem missing crown tooth and then Alan and his mom leave. They left. My English interpreter abandoned me. So now I am sitting, more like lying, in an uncomfortable dentist chair in the dining room of an apartment in Mexico with a dentist who doesn’t speak English and oh look, now he’s holding a drill.
I believe that it was at this point that I started looking nervous. Possibly I have the exact timing details wrong, but let’s just say I know that by this point I was fighting back tears. At some point Jorge mentioned three molars needing to be extracted and I may have in fact let out a little cry. Remember the first sentence you read? Insert here now. He kept saying “tranquila” (peace, calm) and touching my shoulder. I then said something about him extracting three teeth. Eventually I pieced together that he was actually just saying that my third molar needs to eventually be extracted. Hallelujah! God loves me! He was talking about my lone wisdom tooth that hasn’t ever been pulled. Nice. It needs to go anyway.
I relaxed a little and laid back down and started singing ‘Be Still My Soul’ in my head. And now the drill is on.
“Tranquila”
I then looked at him with anything but ‘tranquila’ in my eyes and then to the drill in his hands and then back at him and said, more like pleaded, the only word I know for pain in Spanish “dolores?” To which he replied “no dolores, limpiar” (clean). Again, I was under a bit of stress so my time table may be slightly skewed, but I believe this is where the angels of heaven came down and proceeded with the Hallelujah Choir.
From this point on things went very smoothly and relatively painless. In fact, eventually I no longer needed to continuously be singing church hymns to relax. There was a point when he finished the drill cleaning thing and he had me get up and go over to the sink and rinse out my mouth. It’s a little disturbing seeing blackish grayish purplish water with specks come out of your mouth. I do appreciate the dentist and their assistants not making me have to see that. But alas, there was only the dentist and me here. Then Alan and his mom came back from their ever so important errands, Jorge took a couple Xrays and then he was done. He told me that the seal from my root canal wasn’t working anymore and that was the cause of my pain (or something along those lines). So he cleaned it out, put some medicine in it and wants to see me again Monday. And I’m not sure when, but soon I will get a crown placed on this stupid costly tooth and I will no longer have to deal with this nonsense (with this tooth at least). I gave him M$200 for the Xray and then we left.
It really was a fairly unexciting dentist visit once the initial shock was eliminated. He was/is a totally legitimate dentist who had 11 (I like to count things) framed diplomas and certificates on his wall to prove it. And him and his wife just recently moved to Mexico City for her job and now they come back to Cuernavaca on the weekends and he still keeps some dental clients. Hence why he only does work out of his dining room now.
But the thing is, no matter how legitimate he is or how great and inexpensive the dental work is, or how many times I go back to see him (because I will), I will always feel like I’m living a scene from Law & Order or some movie. You know what I’m talking about. Where the dentist or doctor who has lost his license to practice sets up shop in a run down abandoned building or his crappy apartment and starts taking in clients until one of his clients suddenly dies and the trail leads back to him. Just saying...
