Well, the last couple of weeks have been educative, to say the least! After spending two whole weeks on home soil, I woke up the very next day after getting back to France with a toothache. Bugger. I tried to sleep it off but woke up at 5am the next morning with a swollen face that I barely recognised, and a pain so bad that I cried trying to talk to people in the staffroom once people started coming into work. Uh oh. Now please bear in mind here that I've never had to go for emergency dental treatment at home, never mind in a foreign country, so I was panicking! I phoned round all the dentists in town, but out of those who actually bothered to answer their phones, the best I could get for an "emergency" appointment was 3 weeks later. Obviously, that wasn't much use to me, so I lumped my massive face round to A&E, but the nurses there turned me away as well because they didn't have a dentist on call. Bugger.
Another mournful look into the staffroom and the teachers started to take pity on me, bless them. One offered me his own dental appointment that afternoon, bless him. Another gave me some weird painkiller which would "knock me out for a good 24 hours" (I decided not to try that one), but the best was Aline (I know you read this, so hope you don't mind!), who made me an appointment that morning with a dentist in the next town and dropped me off there in between lessons.
The dentist took one look at me and announced that it was my wisdom teeth. However, it took me a little while to accept his diagnosis, not just because it was so quick, but really because he was so little... I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to healthcare professionals, the ideal is an efficient-looking woman (with glasses on, of course) and a serious expression on her face, or an older man with a kindly expression and white hair, which subconsciously tells you that they've seen this problem a million times before, no it's not that serious, so there's no need to worry - just sit back and let us handle it for you. No such luck here. The guy looked younger than me for a start, and I'm not old enough to have finished dental school, never mind someone younger than me! And he was tiny - a good couple of inches shorter than me - and at 5'5", I'm no giant. In fact, when I first walked into the room and he shook my hand, I thought he was there on work experience. My mistake! However, once I got over my initial forebodings, he turned out to be very nice. So even though he won't read this, I'm sorry for judging! As you can see, I was really in no position to judge someone by their appearance:
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| This wasn't even me at my worst, believe it or not (you won't be able to see those photos!) |
That was two weeks ago - Monday the 27th. This was followed by a trip to the pharmacy for all the pills the dentist prescribed for me (see below) - 8 boxes of things in total. This was followed by an x-ray on the Tuesday, by which time my face had swollen up on both sides, followed by a revisit to the dentist on the Thursday to see the results of the x-ray. The verdict was that all 4 of my wisdom teeth had to be removed. So that meant an appointment with the dental surgeon the following Tuesday, followed by an appointment for the actual extraction the following Wednesday. This Wednesday in fact (the 14th). All under the national health service, all within two weeks. Now tell me that that would happen under the NHS back home!
Of course I'm crapping myself about it now - I'm getting all four teeth out under a local anaesthetic and my face is going to go back to its Moomin proportions from last week, plus a selection of multicoloured bruises to match. This ain't gonna be pretty! Thankfully, one of the families that I do private tuition for have invited me to stay with them for a couple of days afterwards, so at least I won't be on my own. The father is a dentist too, so at least I have backup if anything goes wrong! But it has to be done. Bleurgh.
But every cloud has a silver lining, and I have to do the best with what I can. I've learnt a lot of new vocabulary! I've also become very au fait with my insurance details, because of course I still have no proof of my insurance, so every time I have an appointment I have to apologise and explain my situation and ask the long-suffering secretaries to phone the company to confirm that I am actually insured. Thankfully so far it's worked...!
So wish me luck for Wednesday!
Bises,
Sophia xx
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