Well as many of you already know, I've been having some pretty bad problems with my jaw the past few days resulting in some rather mind-numbing pain and a puree diet. Yesterday I went to the dentist and just as everyone had already suspected, he said nothing was wrong with my teeth, but the muscles in my jaw had been cramped up and such which caused all sorts of other problems.
So yesterday the dentist took a mold of my teeth and today they made the little mouth piece that I have to wear at night now to give my muscles a rest. Well actually he told me to wear it for the rest of today just to get used to it so it wouldn't be as weird to sleep, so speaking Spanish without full range of motion of my tongue has been quite an interesting ordeal. As I was about to leave the dentist office, the assistant was going to throw the mold of my teeth away and so I asked her if I could keep it. I mean, I need a souvineer right? Here it is:
And here is the little mouthpiece that they made for me:
It has only been a few hours and I can already tell a difference.. my head is hurting a little less, I can open and close my mouth a lot more than before, you know, good things to be able to do. Actually, I still haven't paid for the work, because well.. it's a hilarious story. Well, I suppose I had not taken into account that most people around here don't actually pay out of pocket for healthcare (that's what the huge taxes are for), so the dentist office, although very modern, did not have a credit card reader. "No problem," the dentist said, "just go downstairs there is a CajAstur you can get money out of the ATM." Well I went downstairs to the ATM but my card wouldn't work. D'oh. I called the bank and everything, long story short, I think the magnetic strip has been erased, but the bank said they 'reset' my card, whatever that means, so I'll try again tomorrow. Luckily the dentist didn't seem to care, and said just to pay it when I came back for my check up next week.
Oh yeah, for any of you thinking about studying abroad: Just because your insurance says you're covered abroad doesn't mean that people actually accept it. Basically I'll have to pay it all up front and wait for the refund later. Luckily according to the dentist, who worked in Arlington, VA of all places for awhile, the work I had done would have cost me double up front in the good ol' U.S of A.
In any case, hopefully this will do the trick.. Merce said the exact same thing happened to her and that when she got the mouthpiece she was immediately cured after one night's rest. Hopefully that will be the case for me too :-)
