I went to the dentist this afternoon, to see if I could fix a tooth that has been giving me grief for over 8 months. In fact, the tooth is in a bit of a fix because a dentist gave me some grief a little over 8 months ago.
In December 2009, a filling I’d had in for a good 4-5 years came loose, and I rang up the nearest dental surgery to have it fixed. This was during the days when I was ‘homeless’, mind… so I picked a surgery that was quite near to where I was put up by the insurance agency.
It was, in my mind, a fairly simple procedure. I was filling-less in one tooth because my filling fell out. Give me another one, and I would walk out filling-full. But the dentist poked around a bit, told me the tooth was beyond saving but would try to fix it, glanced at the clock and said, “Ooh, 15 minutes, let’s see what we can do,” and proceeded to do the procedure with about 5 minutes to spare.
What happened in the next 24-hours involved a very swollen face, a rush to the A&E at 6am and a week’s course of antibiotics supplemented with not one but two extra strong painkillers. Fast forward eight months and the tooth abscess is still here. (But with some luck, the tooth might not be for much longer).
Now, mired in the world of statistics that I am, I would not hazard that there is a direct correlation between the rushed treatment and my subsequent A&E episode. For all we may know, the infection was already waiting to happen; even though I am aware that the presence of bacteria when a filling is being done can lead to tooth abscess.
But I have come to an understanding, I think, why time may have been of the essence to the locum dentist that treated me that afternoon. I emphasise the locum dentist here because I am quite aware the the surgery partners themselves are probably quite decent people and provide good care. However I didn’t see one of them – I saw the locum dentist.
What it has to do is with the way the NHS pays for dentist services. Here in the UK you have two choices: to go private or to go via the NHS. A dental surgery can take both private and NHS patients at the same time. Now, as an NHS patient, there are caps to what can be charged, depending on what you get done.
The surgery I went to charged £37 per half-hour for private patients. Because I needed a filling, my NHS cost would come up to £45.60, whether it took them half an hour or three hours to see to it. So my guess is, and I emphasise that this is a guess, there is a numbers game to be played.
It goes like this: if the dentist does a filling for a private patient and it takes him between 30 minutes and an hour, he can charge £74. However, this is not the maximum he can make per hour. If he sees an NHS patient and treat him within 30 minutes, he can make £45.60 off that patient plus £37 from the private patient he can see in the next 30 minutes. Or he could fit in 2 NHS patients in an hour and make £91.20. So there is incentive to rush through higher-paying jobs to fit in other jobs within the hour; especially if amount-billed-per-hour is a key performance indicator.
I’m not saying this was what happened to me. I’m just suggesting it is mathematically possible. It was also the subject of one More or Less investigation.
Maybe it wasn’t because of the money at all. Maybe the dentist just had shoddy workmanship. Again I hesitate to suggest that it was the filling that caused my face to swell. It may have been ready to swell even before that. My tooth may have been diseased even before, for all I know. But it all happened within a timeframe that would suggest there was causality.
We will never know, because I refuse to go to that dental surgery every again. Even today, when I sought advice for the current condition of the tooth, I went to a surgery on the other side of town. Where I was treated courteously, I might add.
Did I mention the locum dentist wasn’t very nice? That is why I hesitate to say it was the dentist’s fault. I may well be prejudiced at the way I was treated, you see.
The next dentist I see will be one who’s ass I can kick, both literally and at Pro Evo Soccer.
This is just the tip of what I do to my dentist if he screws my teeth up
I never thought I’d say this, but I think I feel safer in the hands of my younger brother.
*Postscript:
[After the abscess healed, I was due to have the tooth taken out - but this was at yet another clinic where the waiting time was about 6-8 weeks. Unless I went private, of course. After being given an appointment, I was deferred twice. I gave up. Not only is dental care exorbitantly expensive, it is also slow. Now you know why Brits are famous for bad teeth].
Five things about fasting in the UK – 2010 edition
2 commentsI was pleasantly surprised to find a modest selection of lagu raya on Spotify today. Some of the key classics are missing – my favourite lagu hari raya ever ever is Sepasang Kurung Biru by Khairul Johari Johar – but still, enough to keep me in a good mood as I wade through these last few days of Ramadhan 1431H.
It has been an interesting Ramadhan for me, not in the least because of the 17-hour stretch I am making do without food or water this year. (If you think that’s bad, it gets longer next year). This is my ninth or possible tenth Ramadhan in the UK (I lose count) and I’ve gone through the 8-hour-buka-pukul-4 fast to these marathon sahur-pukul-2.30-iftar-pukul-8.30 stretches, and I’ve had good ones and bad ones.
I admit, there were years where all I did was fast and iftar and did not even bother to see to the terawih prayers regularly, if at all. But I think this year’s been one where I’ve tried harder to find the meaning of the holy month, relative to other years, and I think once it has gone I will actually miss it.
Anyway, in the spirit of reflection, I thought I’d do a list instead of an elongated blog entry. (Plus I need to pack and write a TMI piece, so I can’t quite ramble for as long as I’d like). So here you go:
Five things about fasting in the UK
(that you didn’t really care to know about but now you’ve read about them you’ll say, ah well, that wasn’t so bad)
1. You find that long hours spent fasting isn’t all that bad
It’s amazing what your body can do when push comes to shove. The thought of a 17-hour fast – or any fast where the hours you spend sans food seriously outweighs the hours you are allowed to eat – is daunting, even if you’re a 23-year veteran at this. This isn’t my first time doing long stretches – my first few fasts involved 19-odd hours in the mid-1980′s, but when you’re 9, it’s easier to skip days. But when you get round to doing it, amazingly the body adapts. I suppose what you have at sahur counts, as well as how you manage sleep given the lack of caffeine as a daytime stimulant. But it’s not intolerable.
2. You try harder to find what Ramadhan really means
There is little pomp and grandeur that marks the start of Ramadhan – or the end of it, at that – when you are living in a country where Muslims make up the minority. No pasar ramadhans, no waktu berbuka on tv, no Rumah Kedai to keep you occupied while you wait for iftar (instead, I’ve turned to Friends for the same effect). So you sort of try a bit harder to remind yourself it’s a holy month. With the help of like-minded friends, technology does allow you to explore alternatives to staples of a Malaysian Ramadhan, although faxing pasar-ramadhan fare has yet to work.
3. Your culinary skills are put to the test – and you actually pass
The option of going home to see what mom cooked no longer exists if mom does not live 15 minutes down the road. But the craving for food that mom cooks for you never abates. So what do you do? You try and see if you can actually cook edible food. As in something that you could, in theory, serve to other human beings. It gets interesting, what you do when you experiment. And I never thought I’d say this, but cooking is awesome therapy. Especially when you know you get to eat afterwards.
4. You actually don’t care if others around you are eating
I remember being very particular about not eating in front of people when I wasn’t fasting in Ramadhan, because I hated having people eat around me when I was fasting. When you’re abroad, though, the majority don’t fast. And they are less than likely to care if you are. They eat away, and suddenly you realise that you don’t quite care if they eat. After all, this Ramadhan is no longer about you conforming to society’s expectations that as a Muslim, you should fast. It is really between you and God, because there is no hearse that is going to carry you down the road if you don’t. The world moves along, and you do too.
Last week, I was away at a conference where I noticed there were other Muslims there. Everyone kept going out for a coffee break or for food, so we just sat back in the presentation hall and relaxed. No one asked us why we didn’t go out for coffee, and none of us tried to offer an explanation. Of course, it helped that the conference dinner was held well after sunset..
5. Eid may well fall on a work day. Or worse still, an exam day. And you don’t die because of it.
The former happens for me almost every year. I end up going to work a tad earlier so I am able to catch the Eid prayers, and then it’s back to the office. The latter, my cousin is experiencing this year. Amazingly, despite the gasps of horror that I get from people when I tell them this, none of us die as a result. Although, it’d be nice to just take a day off to pig out and put on all the pounds you’ve shed.
So, to my friends experiencing Ramadhan abroad – what differences did you notice this year? Fancy doing a 5-things yourself? It’d be good to learn from each other’s experiences.