My trip to the hospital this week.

Earlier this week an old filling fell out if a tooth, and the resulting hole became infected. The left side of my face swelled up, and I was in quite a bit of pain all told. Now I have insurance from my work, but it doesn’t refund all the cash, and if I go to a western hospital, it refunds even less. The western hospitals are really expensive too, so, after taking some medicine which didn’t work, we set off to the nearest semi-decent hospital.

Unfortunately it was Sunday, which meant the good doctors were not in, because they don’t work on weekends!! (The lesson here is to not get sick on the weekend).

We were given the address of another hospital though, which apparently does have working doctors on the weekend. The hospital was on the other side of town, and when we arrived we found a very nice, modern building. We were also told we were too late, despite it being just past nine in the morning. The patient quota had been filled for the (half) day that they worked.

Thus we had to go to the emergency area, which was far less nice. There we waited for an hour and a half on a very cold seat until the doctor could see us.

It turned out the doctor was, in fact, a dentist. Now, I know I needed my tooth fixing, but I mainly wanted some antibiotics to get rid of the infection first. Reluctant to leave after several hours of waiting, I decided to see what he had to say. This meant an x-ray first (back in the lovely nice building), and then back on the chair, where the dentist removed the remains of the filling and put a temporary one back in.

No antibiotics were needed he informed us, much to my disagreement, but what can you do?

So I was in pain for most of Sunday and, to a slightly lesser degree, Monday. I’m not too wonderful still.

Did I mention the dentist area had five chairs in a row, and five dentists working on five patients at the same time? I must dig out my dentist pictures.

I also have to go back on Friday. Joy.

Tags: Denstis, hospitals in China, living in China