The Unthinkable

Some people prefer predictable over spontaneous, inside instead of outside, comfort over awkwardness, leisure over adventure. Now I must say, Laura and I aren't always the ones taking risks, but this weekend, we did the unthinkable: we went to a Chinese dentist!

Laura's had a cavity that's been bothering her for quite some time. We both don't like dentists and put off taking care of it until the pain became unbearable. We were afraid a root canal might have been in order, so we started asking around about local dentists in Lijiang to see what was out there. We got a few hits, though deep down inside I knew Lijiang wouldn't have the standard of care we were looking for. We checked out the highest recommended dentist first. This dental clinic was tucked away in a tourist section of town. It looked like a guesthouse turned hospital type building that was absolutely desolate. We looked around and called out for people but nobody was around. We eventually found 2 very drowsy ladies in dirty lab coats watching TV in a small upstairs room. We asked if they were the dentists and they looked at each other like, "It's your turn. No, it's your turn." After a few awkward silent seconds, one of the ladies motions for us to go to the other room where her equipment was. Laura sits in the dental chair and we briefly explained the problem. She grabbed some tools from a wooden dresser and started probing around in Laura's mouth. After a few minutes, she said she could work on it. We told her we thought it might be serious and would like to first take an x-ray to see how serious the problem is. She said the x-ray machine isn't great and nobody can read it anyways. Then she asked us again if we wanted her to work on it. At this point, we realized this wasn't going to work out and apologized for the inconvenience. As we walked away we remembered this was the highest recommended dentist in town.

We quickly started looking for places outside of Lijiang. Kunming, our province's capital, would be the closest city with decent care followed by Thailand. A good friend of ours recommended a place in Kunming that was clean and affordable. After confirming with the dentist that they would be open this weekend, we decided to commit and buy overnight train tickets for Friday and return overnight tickets for Saturday, it was going to be a rushed trip. Well, the dentist ended up being great. They were professional, courteous, clean, competent, and willing to accommodate. Most doctors don't like to give pain medicine including novocaine but this clinic was willing to shoot Laura up. We got an x-ray of the tooth along with a few hot and cold tests to help determine the degree of the problem. The dentist said it was just a cavity and she could fix it up no problem. Bam, it was done. My wife is one tough cookie and I'm happy that she's able to eat on that side of her mouth again. We spent the rest of our 8 hours in Kunming drinking starbucks, shopping and seeing friends. Overall, a great time.

Nerves have been calmed after they decided it was just a basic filling.

We can all hear the nightmarish sound of those dental drills.