[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]I seriously believe a Taiwan dentist screwed my teeth. I need three caps on molars.Thailand is winning by a long way.
Taiwan dentists are eons behind Thailand. Don’t let them anywhere near your teeth.
HG[/quote]
I had fantastic help from a Taiwanese dentist in Chungli. She spoke good English and had obviously lived overseas for a while. What was your dentists English like?
Almost non-existent. Well I only spoke Chinese, so I guess I don’t really know.
I heard, but have no way of knowing for sure, that Thai dentists use the very latest techniques, but that Taiwan’s dentists are restrained by the health care system.
I think what happened to me was that the dentist popped in too big a cap on one molar and changed my bite, putting pressure on other molars which have since yielded - read broken.
I continue to loathe all dentists and have to admit, reports they suffer a very high suicide rate is somehow reassuring.
HG
Went to the dentist at Taipei University Hospital about a month ago for a routine check. They did X-Ray, cleaned my teeth and said everything was fine. Nice teeth…
A couple of days ago one of my front teeth went numb and I went to see a dentist in my home country,where I am currently “on vacation”. Turns out, my front tooth is dead already and I need root canal treatment. I just paid over 7000NT for an improvisatory treatment and signed up for the real deal next week. I am going to pay a fortune, but damn it’s worth is. I hope they can fix this in the next two weeks, cause I honestly don’t want to go for after treatment in Taipei. Freaking idiots there…or does anybody know of a good dentist in Taipei?? Please surprise me…
Went to my (new) dentist today. Had some bad decay under a crown, and the toothache wasn’t going away. He was a pleasant chap, quite thin and wiry, late 40s, with a grasp of english that extended to dental terms and not much else.
“Ah lu xian-sheng, zuo qi lai. Jintian yao gei ni ne-ge, ne-ge,‘temporary crown’.”
I lay back, he whipped off the crown, and produced the needle, containing the stuff that would get me throught the pain of the root canal treatment. Into the gum it went, and in followed the anaesthetic. At this point, at my old dentist on the Kings Road, i would have a cooling off point here, maybe 5 mins or so, for the numbness to take hold. We would chat about Chelsea and Shevchenko. But here, did we wait? We did not. Straight into the drilling he went, right to the heart of the decay. He hit the tooth’s nerve almost immediately and with some force. I jolted and contorted with pain.
“Ah, it’s ok, ok.”
Then he attacked again, and hit the nerve for the 2nd time. This time the pain was so agonizing that my back arched, and I simply had to jerk my head away (and I consider myself pretty a pain-tolerant kind of guy).
He tut-tutted, reached for the needle again, and emptied a second syringe into the gum, this time right close to the tooth. And then he was back on the drill, poking and jabbing around, playing subbuteo with the nerve. Good grief, it was the worst. Very soon we had to stop again, as I couldn’t take the searing white-hot pain he was inflicting.
At this point he paused and had a staccato conversation with my wife, who translated for me:
" Your problem is that, as a western male, your high alcohol intake is such that the anaesthetic is not working properly. So you have a very high tolerance to the injections. "
Listening through my blurred world of agony, this was still laughable. Then he delivered the coup de grace. Producing the needle for a third time, he angled it vertically into my mouth, aiming towards the tooth. The shiny point hung there for a second, then as he plunged it downwards, I realised (but too late) what he was doing. The third injection went straight down into the middle of the tooth, directly into the raw open nerve. Man, I hit the ceiling with that one. I moaned and whimpered in absolute pain. What a butcher 
.
Granted, after that, I couldn’t feel much at all, but that moment when the needle met the nerve is one that will stay with me for a long time. Toes are still curling just thinking about it. We parted on fairly good terms, and my wife asked him where he had trained. He told her that he had been an army dentist for 20 years. That made an awful lot of sense.
Hah! Horrid shit that! They tried it on me once and I just clamped my jaws. So the venerable doctor set his timer to 3 minutes. After that time I didn’t feel that I was adequately anethetised. He was getting a bit pissed off with me, went off and operated on another patient. Throught the insane screams and babble I discerned two words: “Bagginnsssss! Ssshire!”
He came back after 15 minutes smirking because he’d kept me waiting. I smirked back and said “Take your time, mate”.
They just want to get through as many patients as possible in a short space of time to make more money. And they want to save the extra 10NT$ that adequate anaesthesia would cost. Just refuse to have anything done to you unless the Novocaine has been in effect for at least 8 minutes. Add 5 minutes for root canal and major extractions.
Nuit, please please please post that butcher’s name and address so that no one else goes to him!
So very sorry to hear your story 
I need to go to the dentist, and I was thinking about trying one closer to home instead my good old Dr. Wells clinic, but now…I think I’ll just make the trip to Zhishan and be happy about it!
Have the threads been merged? I can’t find my original “Argh…I’ve just been to the dentist.”
I got back at noon today after having all four out under general anaesthetic.
I found out at the same time that I’m a pussy. It wasn’t quite fair though, they didn’t tell me to start counting to ten. So it goes without saying then that I didn’t even get to zero. I was having bets with the wife as to how high I could count, but they cheated.
I woke up from the general anaesthetic like a shot after they gave me some wake up dose and immediately started shouting as the local I had to numb the pain in my mouth didn’t work at all, not even a little itsy bit. Apparently I’m special they told me as I’m the first one to ever complain to them that I could feel everything in all of its glorious pain. They switched me to some happier medication and I was happy again for a while.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, I woke up with a head splitting headache. It was weird as everyone told me I would feel fun and a bit drunk. I wanted to bore a hole in my head to let it out, it was excruciating.
Now I look just like the godfather and twenty years older with my puffed up football face, and I’ts not really much fun, but for the tub of wisdom teeth I get to shake around and admire how long my tusks were. I’m sure to have some pretty huge holes by the looks of the trunks that came out of my mouth. I can’t tell for sure though, because I can’t even open my mouth more than one centimetre for the swelling.
Oh, and I’m still partially numb in an area of my bottom lip and cheek. The local anaesthetic should have worn off yesterday, so I’m guessing compressed nerves. Anyone?
And can I drink fizzy drinks?
[quote=“sulavaca”]
And can I drink fizzy drinks?[/quote]
NO! Never again! That’s what gets you lot in this mess. 
Damn, I didn’t go through anything nearly as bad as that when I had mine out, it was pretty easy, although once the injections wore off, it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but the happy pills helped.
I didn’t get swollen at all, but yeah, it does depend on how deep down into your jaw the roots go.
Maybe that’s a good reason not to wait to have 'em out?
And yeah, you do sound “special” and I bet no dentist on this island will ever touch you or your mouth again 
hey recently I started using this tooth whitening toothpaste…and this one tooth starts to hurt…but if I stop using that toothpaste the tooth is fine…it’s weird do you guys experience this with teeth whitening toothpaste
It used to be said by dentists that tooth whitening paste causes greater sensitivity in the mouth. I thought that perhaps things had moved on since then, but its possible they were right then and that things haven’t changed.
Well I have had my studs and tracks fitted for three days now and I have already discovered what all those North Americans were calling Tylenol as I couldn’t sleep yesterday for the pain. The pain, oh, the pain! I had a proper migraine for the first time ever I think The tooth pain doesn’t paticularly bother me, but the headache after the pain spread to my head was a little unbearable. Still nothing to having my teeth out a few weeks ago.
I’m settling into the braces thing now. My stomache’s not happy though because I can’t properly chew all my food, so there are too big lumps floating around my intestines causing some glub glugs.
Sorry Opihiman, my dentistry is in Shilin Taipei, otherwise I would recommend the place to you. Its a bit far to travel from there.
Went to a dentist today for a check-up. Seems like flossing between my left upper premolar and molar is not longer an option. [strike]The gap is now partially filled (I’m assuming) by a new filling.[/strike] I was able to break it with floss :s
I am sure this is the same place that my charged me 15,000 for a root canal but only did half of it. My current dentist didn’t say too much when he had to redo it but he wasn’t too happy about the work of the last guy. I know people might be quick to criticise past work done by others, but I am just not sure I would trust the first guy with my teeth and money again.[/quote]
I’ll be honest, I’ve never had to do anything as intensive as a root canal, although he did rebuild half a tooth that had split off maybe 4 years ago and it was pain free and the tooth is still going strong.
But there again I am British, and we ain’t exactly proud when it comes to dentistry 
I heard from a US friend here (I too am a Brit, as you might tell from my avatar - which was stuck on a Kit-kat I bought once ), that TW dentists are trained generally according the US manner and that US dentists do a LOT of un-necessary root fillings as they can screw any amount of $$$ out their patients for that treatment and that the dentists here have, basically, learned from them.
In the UK, root fillings are not done half as routinely as they seem to be here or, if the comments in this thread are anything to go by and my very Taiwanese assumptions that the contributors are foreigners therefore American (!!! 
) is correct, in the US. The nerve would have to have died or there be serious problems before a root filling was done.
I was ‘offered’ one a couple of months back which wasn’t needed at all, by a dentist who hadn’t any intention of using anasthetic - so make sure, if you go for one, that they will give you the needed jabs!
PS I can’t believe that my sister in Tianmu has just told me that ‘most dentists here come highly recommended’. … 
I’ve had seven root canals done in Taiwan and never felt a bit of pain.
You clearly didn’t go to the chap I met last time!! For which I’m pleased for you - really! 
How much did it cost you, if you don’t mind my asking? And can you recommend anywhere that will deal with the bit of my tooth that’s just fallen off without trying to torture me get my savings??
Somehow I’m not surprised.
[quote=“Bao_Lisha”]You clearly didn’t go to the chap I met last time!! For which I’m pleased for you - really!
How much did it cost you, if you don’t mind my asking? And can you recommend anywhere that will deal with the bit of my tooth that’s just fallen off without trying to torture me get my savings?? [/quote]
My dentist’s got a tiny little surgery in Sanchong. He seems to be quite “famous”, 'cos there’s always a lot of people there. Mmm, root canals. I recall paying around NT$200 per session for the actual root canal (with National Health Insurance). You need to go at least twice for the nerve-digging-out business, a third time to make the mold, and a fourth time for the crown fitting. Crowns are not cheap. They range from $6000-12000 if I recall correctly. Maybe you won’t need a crown, just one of those ceramic UV light filling thingies.
I don’t know the address, as I can’t read nor type Chinese, but if you’re interested, I can show you where.
Somehow I’m not surprised.[/quote]
You’re not surprised about the seven root canals or me not feeling the pain?