Much to my distress, a painful toothache revealed itself whilst we were out and about on our exploration of south western China. After a brief consideration of the matter I quickly became rather concerned about what exactly a trip to the local dentist might involve.
When one finds oneself someway from home and out in the wilds, a sense of vulnerability to medical misfortune can rear its ugly head from time to time. A slow drip feed of horror stories involving emergency appendectomies are at least partly to blame. Usually performed with a hoof cleaner and an IV fashioned from a drinking straw, carrier bag and a couple of pints of yak milk,
they’re certainly enough to keep the potential for painful misfortune lurking somewhere in the minds of most travellers.
Having made it to Kunming, the provincial capital, I was hoping that at least I might be spared armrest straps, a famous grouse anaesthetic and a hammer.
“There’s a western style dentist but they don’t speak a word of
the
Queen’s,” a helpful local expat had informed us. “Try the
hospital –
it’s practically free.”
Off we plodded to the local infirmary. There wasn’t a great deal of
help on offer there either but we somehow managed to make it unscathed
through the hoards of incredibly ill looking people and up to the fifth
floor. After some cursory paperwork I was ushered into a room that at
least resembled what I remembered a dental clinic to look like. Well, in as much as people were planted in reclining chairs while men in white coats eagerly set about inflictin considerable pain on them, mainly through the dangerously unrestrained probing of their oral cavities.
Luckily, I found myself fortunate enough to play my part in the sharing
of knowledge across the generations, thrown as I was straight into what appeared to be the morning's YTS seminar. After 10 rather nervous minutes of thoughtful prodding and poking while eight shyly giggling student dentists peered into my gob, my ‘dentist’ confidently proclaimed that I had nothing
to worry about. As delighted as I was to have avoided what I could only assume was derived from a corkscrew, and to have been party to the educational development of the Chinese Dental Service’s future, in
reality I’d only confirmed that there were eight undergraduates who
really should have just stayed in bed. Further examination that
afternoon at the private clinic revealed chronic decay under my most
recent filling and a fun filled month of root canal therapy. At least
it didn’t cost me 50 quid just to walk through his door though.
