Have pain. Will travel.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States… Mr. Williams’ decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada’s health-care system.
Source: National Post

Health care has always been one of those annoying “defining characteristics” Canadians seem to go to when they want to distinguish themselves from our neighbours to the south. So it’s understandable why some would be miffed at Premier Williams. The idea of a Canadian going to the States for health care seems as preposterous as losing to the States in a major junior hockey tournament. Oh, wait. Right.

Anyway, I can sympathize with the guy. Is the idea of travelling to find a specialist who can do the best job on you that preposterous? I don’t think so. I should know. I have a Mexican dentist.

That’s right. I am one of those people who travel to exotic locations to get “work done.” But instead of being a rich socialite who travels to Brazil to get ass implants and navel enhancements, I go to Mexico to get my teeth cleaned.

While the term “Mexican dentist” probably conjures up images of some sketchy guy squatting in a Tijuana alleyway with some bloody pliers and a bottle of mezcal for anaesthetic, I assure you, he’s not like that. He’s actually just a normal dentist that just happens to be in Mexico. So what if he works off the back of a donkey cart? Just kidding.

Recently my girlfriend and I went to Mexico to visit her parents—snowbirds who have a modest home in Chapala, a small resort town next to Mexico’s largest lake. She had an appointment for a cleaning and was trying to convince me to go.

“He’s awesome,” she assured me. “He’s got this cool retro equipment and sometimes it breaks down. It’s so cute!”

She wasn’t doing a good job. “Retro” and “cute” might be qualities I look for in a wall unit or a vintage suit, but not a machine that has a pointy metal spike spinning at 50,000 rpm inside my face. I looked at her, perturbed.

“Don’t worry, he’s great. I’ve been going to him for 11 years. See?” She shined her perfectly white, evenly spaced teeth at me.

“Fine.” I sighed, hoping that maybe, at the very least, he might be so sketchy that he’d be generous with the dream gas.

She clapped her hands. “Great! I’ll call him. Oh, and by the way, his chair is kind of stuck in permanent recline. So you have to sort of climb in.”

When I finally did show up, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I made a game of it all and hopped into the chair as if I was about to launch the Space Shuttle.

Now, let me just say: my teeth are horrible. I think one reason is that I don’t give a shit about dental hygiene. I figure if God really wanted us to have healthy teeth, he wouldn’t have made Oreos so fucking delicious. “It might be bad in there,” I warned him.

He put his hand on my shoulder and grinned politely. “I’ll be the judge of that. Let me take a look.”

He brought the cold, tiny mirror past my lips, and positioned it to scan the back of my teeth. His smile melted into a horrified frown and he muttered, “We might need two sessions for this.”

The topical anaesthetic tasted like crap and began to wear off midway through the scraping. Being a polite Canadian, I didn’t have the heart to tell him. “It’s okay,” I reasoned, “I deserve this. I should brush more.” He continued gouging. At one point, he stood up and the chair he was sitting on rolled across the room, rattling the glass as it hit the cupboard behind him. It felt like he was driving a railroad spike into my skull. I tried to feign positivity, but soon my body couldn’t hide the pain and tears began streaming down my fake smiley face. When it was all done, he walked into the other room and let out the longest most exasperated sigh I’d ever heard. I swear I heard him pour a drink and take a shot. We both had survived something really intense.

As I sat there, I wondered why. Why was I sitting helpless in pain from lousy anaesthetic at this Mexican dentist when I could support a Canadian dentist and my mouth would feel numb for week? I felt like an asshole and wondered why anyone would ever leave Canada to get work done. Then, as if reading my mind, he replied. “Okay. That will be $30 please.”

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA