November 13, 2013
Now it was time for some comfort food at McDonald’s before heading to see Dr. Singh at Stewart Street Dental. It’s always nervous-making to see a new doctor, especially in a third-world country. It turned out we needn’t have been concerned, and in fact Dr. Singh would turn out to be the best dentist we’ve ever been to.
First we sat in the outer office waiting for our appointment, and it was quite nice. When Rich’s turn came, we were ushered into another office with its own waiting area. It was beautifully done and well-air conditioned. I had the option of going into the dental office with Rich and decided to do so. I was impressed—I think it was the nicest dental office I’ve ever seen with paintings on the wall and a beautiful painting on the ceiling for the patient to contemplate. We met Dr. Singh and his assistant and they both seemed very nice (as were the nurses we’d met already in the office).
And so began Rich’s exam, which started with a general exam before a special camera was used for the problem area and tooth, providing a close-up display for a large monitor mounted on the wall. This monitor was there so Dr. Singh could show the patient what was going on. The unintended consequence was that any guest sitting in there could see it, too. In this particular case, it looked pretty gruesome. Here, a photo that sums up my experience as the photo unexpectedly appeared on the monitor before I could turn away…
Now came a discussion about what was going on. There was a lot of decay yet no pain because the tooth’s nerves had retracted. We’d been hoping Rich previously had a root canal on this tooth (he’d had a couple over the previous decade), but he hadn’t. So the next step would be to go to the X-ray room for a better look. This room had it’s own waiting room and included a desk with a monitor and seating area so the results could be shown to the patient. A separate X-ray room contained a machine the likes of which we’d never seen.
For the X-ray, the patient uses a chin rest and then bites down on a plastic thingy placed near the front of the teeth. The machine takes over from there, rotating to x-ray the entire skull including the jaws and the teeth. It all happens in a few seconds, and then that’s it. No more X-rays, no painful plastic inserts in the mouth, nothing to do but go sit in the waiting area for the photos to “process” which doesn’t take long. When it was all ready, we sat at the desk and looked at the photos of Rich’s teeth and skull, which could be adjusted to be viewed from any angle. Remarkable!
The good news: the area wasn’t infected. The bad news: Rich may need a root canal (Dr. Singh would have to do a more thorough exam to assess this) and definitely a new crown. Normally we would have gone ahead and done all this, but we thought we might be leaving over the coming weekend. Dr Singh had a suggestion: he could clean out all the decayed area, cover it with a temporary crown, and then we could come back next season to get the possible root canal and permanent crown. Since we were already planning to come back here; it was an easy decision: yes! So we made another appointment to get this initial process done the next day.
I didn’t get any photos of the office or the procedure as it didn’t seem polite to do so, but another time Rich got a photo of me getting a cleaning.
Tooth taken care of, we headed back to the yacht club and celebrated with beer and tostadas. Below, a few day and evening photos of the yacht club (click to enlarge and scroll through any photos below).
We did return for our appointment the following day, and I settled in for what I figured would be a long wait; so what a surprise when Rich was done in half an hour! Dr. Singh used a laser to clean out the decay in Rich’s tooth; so not only was it fast, it required no novocaine. He then put on the temporary crown and we were good to go.
Now all we needed was a weather window as the one were hoping for was starting to look pretty iffy. –Cyndi
