Dental story 3
On the morning of Wednesday, June 6th the filling on my bottom left molar fell out - again. It’s the same one that always falls out, maybe because it’s an awkward size, in an awkward position, in an awkward spot. My Japanese dentist says it’s because I grind my teeth. It’s a filling, not a crown. But it’s a really big filling, so when it falls out it leaves the entire interior of my molar exposed to the air, to food and drink, etc. It’s the sort of thing that needs to be dealt with ASAP.
I called my local dental clinic, the Shin-nakano clinic, to ask if the dentist had time that day. He didn’t. I made an appointment for Friday 8th, although I hated to wait that long. In addition, I hate making appointments on the telephone because receptionists don’t seem to know what they’re saying - not what I am saying, but what they are saying. I make a point of speaking very simply, but they scuttle my simplicity by trying anticipate what I want rather than listening to what I am telling them I want. It’s better to make an appointment in person, which is what I usually do. I didn’t want to wait until Friday 8th, so when I got home around 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday 8th I walked to a dental clinic that opened in February about 50 meters away from our apartment. (It used to be the local Dominoes Pizza place.) I was betrayal my regular dentist by secretly going to someone else.
I wasn’t a patient, but I walked in and asked if the doctor could see me that day, and I explained what the problem was. The receptionist went back into the clinic area and asked the doctor (Dr. Arai, I learned). She told me to come back at 6:00 p.m. So I did. When I returned I had to fill out a patient information / history questionnaire, which is what you always have to do when you are a new patient. It’s tricky because it’s all in technical Japanese, but I could do it with the receptionist’s help. Then I was given a “shinsatsuken,” which is a clinic membership, or patient ID card - the size of a credit card. Some clinics use a plastic card, others paper. I have, like, a dozen “shinsatsuken” in my wallet from every clinic and hospital I’ve ever visited. I use four of them regularly. Whenever I visit a clinic the first thing I do is hand over my “shinsatsuken” and the receptionist finds my name in her hand-written appointment book, I am ide ntified as a patient of that clinic or hospital, then she finds my file - either a paper file or a computer file, which is more common these days. When I visit a hospital, I need my “shinsatsuken” to get a number (from a number-dispensing machine) for the department that I’m visiting, and afterward to pay my bill in a machine akin to a bank ATM.
Anyway, so I went to Dr. Arai’s clinic and he agreed to see me as soon as possible. No English there (I’ve learned that English is fairly common among medical doctors but not so common among dentists), but I made do with what language I had. If I’m patient, if I give myself more than enough time, if I cooperate with the staff’s attempts to communicate with me things usually work out.
In the past, I’ve always retrieved the filling when it fell out, so I could take it to the dentist, show it to him/her, say “this is the problem,” and he/she would simple re-attach it with some kind of dental cement. But this time, Dr. Arai said - after taking an X-ray - there was a cavity and he decided to drill. He gave me anesthetic, came back ten minutes later and started drilling. It hurt immediately, so he gave me more anesthetic. He came back ten minutes later and started drilling again. It hurt again, so he gave me more anesthetic. I n the end he gave me four doses of anesthetic before we could proceed.
After about 50 minutes I left with a temporary seal over the molar and a follow-up appointment on Wednesday 13th. Japanese dentists habitually need two appointments to fill a cavity. First, they drill a hole, make a mold of it and cover it with a temporary seal. Then they custom make a filling that exactly fits the hole they drilled. Foreigners complain about this system as a kind of conspiracy, because it requires / forces a second visit, costing time, money, inconvenience. I don’t complain about it, though. That’s just the Japanese way of doing things, and Japanese dentists and doctors have been very, very good to me. Their way of doing things works, but it works in a Japanesy kind of way.
Sadly, at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 14th, 27 only hours after Dr. Arai fitted me with my new filling, the filling came loose and fell out while I was eating. I could feel it go down my throat. (I immediately imagined it passing through me in about 24-hours, which did not seem to happen.) I was so freaking pissed off! What a waste of two appointments, five anesthetic shots, and almost ¥6,000. I knew his clinic was still open at that time, and although I was nearby I was only minutes away from starting a part-time evening job. But I called the clinic to complain. After explaining the situation, the receptionist put him on the line. Of course, he was interested in a new appointment to fix the problem. But I wasn’t calling to make another appointment, I was only calling to complain. I had already decided to betray him and return to my first love, the dentists at the Shin-nakano clinic.
A word of warning about Japanese dentists, though. They will not do anything that you don’t tell them to do. I mean, they will only do what you tell them to do. There could be a problem in you mouth only centimeters from their eyes, but if you don’t bring it to their attention they will say nothing about it. I don’t like it very much when medical people ask me what the problem is because it seems to me that that’s their job. They are supposed to tell me what the problem is. Or not. When it comes to dentistry, I cannot see inside my mouth, and I do not know either what is normal or what to look for. It’s the dentist’s job to do that.