last night, while eating dinner with my expat friends living in shanghai, a horrible moment occurred: i felt a slightly painful shift both on top of one of my teeth. a filling had come loose, and was starting to fall out.
after a quick call to my travel insurance company to verify my coverage (which turned out to only cover half the cost of the filling replacement), and a medicinal Pernod on the rocks at a local bar, i went to sleep.
the next morning, my first stop was a quick visit to the US Consulate in Shanghai to get a list of recommended western dentists (there's nothing worse than the feeling of either not being able to communicate clearly with someone who's about to start using a drill on your teeth, or not being fully confident in their training). this involved cutting through a line of several hundred Chinese people waiting in line for (presumably) work or tourism visas, and heading into the unoccoupied U.S. Citizen Services area, where I was speedily provided with a list of local doctors and dentists recommended by the consulate. I have to say, having never used the services at any US consulate before, I was impressed by the way they quickly got me the information I needed -- props to them for moving fast!
by that afternoon i was in the chair of an excellent chinese dentist who did her training in Oregon and spoke flawless english, and after an x-ray and evaluation, had the filling repaired and was out of there before i fully knew what happened.
hopefully that will be the only medical emergency on my trip -- and if anything else does happen, i hope it gets resolved as smoothly as this did!
