Look Ma, no Novocain! A dental horror/love story

Well, I meant to go to the dentist before we left the country, really I did. I had been having intermittent tooth pain for months, especially upon eating sweets. But somehow, there were just so many things going on, and I never got around to it. So we’d been in Fiji for maybe two weeks before I started asking John about dentists: specifically, were there any in the country that would not give me nightmares. My tooth was hurting, and I was afraid that I might have to remain in pain for a year or two, or pay a lot of money to fly over to Australia if I got desperate. Turns out there was a recommended dentist in Labasa (1.5-2 hours away depending on if you get stuck behind a bus and how much it’s raining). So I called and made an appointment, though I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of appointment I had made.

me: “I would like to make an appointment with the dentist.”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, [something about a] clinic.”
me: “I don’t know about a clinic. I live in Savusavu and I would like to come to Labasa to see the dentist.”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, what are you having?”
me: “I would like to have my teeth cleaned and examined. I am having some pain, and I think I might need a filling.”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, tomorrow?”
me: “How about Thursday?”
receptionist: “mumble mumble, [the only audible time I hear is] quarter past two.”
me: “OK, quarter past two. Thank you.”

So I go to Labasa and show up at the dentist’s office at the appropriate time. While I’m waiting, I look at the posted price list: tooth extraction (top of the list) $5-15, scaling and polishing (which turns out to be cleaning) $30-45, on down to root canal for a whopping $250. Well, I’d better not need one of those, because I didn’t bring $250.

I go into the dentist’s area and sit in the chair. Everything looks pretty normal: the chair with automatic raising and lowering, that light that’s always making you squint no matter how they adjust it, the tools and instruments. My first surprise: there’s no hygienist. The dentist does the cleaning himself. Normal procedure. Then the exam: the pain is apparently caused by a cavity and it just needs a simple filling. He gives me a mirror so I can see, and says “It’s a small one, I’ll just go ahead and take care of it right now.” I’m relieved I don’t have to come back. Then he gets out the drill and starts right in. Wait, no shot? No topical gel? No, I realize. There’s not going to be any of that, he’s just going to fill it up the fast way, and I get to sit there squeezing the hell out of my skirt and making fingernail imprints in my palms. And I get to watch. I still have the mirror, and I can see the whole thing. Somehow, though, seeing it is so fascinating that it helps with the pain. I’ve never seen a filling being done before, and I know exactly when it’s going to hurt. So he fills it up, using all the same high tech dentistry as in the US, giving me a white composite filling. It’s done, and then comes the clincher: “Well, it looked small, but it was really quite deep.” “No shit.” is all I can think.

I go back up front to pay, and it comes to a grand total of $70: 35 for the cleaning, 35 for the filling. Well, considering that that’s about $35 US, and that it probably would have cost 10 times as much to get it done in the States, I’m glad I waited and had it done here. Overall a positive experience, even without the Novocain.