This article I wrote after coming back from the USA. It was published in The Tribune on 01 April 2024. It was a personal experience of dental treatment of my daughter Kirandeep and the ordeal of my NRI friend Amarjit Singh Dhaliwal (Papoo) from my village Kandhala Jattan. The way Papoo narrated the incident, it was hilarious. On that day I decided that I shall write about it. What I forwarded to The Tribune is as under :-
'Some tortures are physical, And some are mental, But the one that is both is Dental’, so said Ogden Nash. God forbid if you are abroad in the USA or European Country and you may have to undertake dental treatment. It will definitely punch a hole in your pocket and upset your budget for the next few months.
I recently visited the USA to be with
my daughter. She had severe dental pain and it involved more than one
tooth. She had overlooked this for quite
some time but I was quite concerned to see her inability to chew hard food. On
my insistence, she visited a dentist who should be able to treat her under the
available insurance plan.
She came home and looked quite
exasperated. She said that her bill for dental treatment under her medical plan
would turn out to be $12,000. I was shocked. Within this amount, she could fly
to and fro India in Business Class, get her treatment done, and still save half
the amount. No wonder, for most NRIs who visit India, dental treatment is
usually on their cards.
A friend of mine, from
school days, who had migrated to the USA, narrated his woeful but amusing tale
of dental treatment abroad. The filling
of his molar had worn off and he was unable to bear the pain. He had no option
but to visit the dentist. As he could only converse in rudimentary English, he
took along somebody who could explain his problem to the dentist.
The dentist, who happened
to be an East Asian immigrant, was told about my friend's English handicap. As
he settled in the patient’s recliner and the doctor examined his teeth, the dentist
asked him what he wanted. With the dentist’s examining tools still in his
mouth, my friend said, “Fill”. Now the doctor, as per his knowledge of English
and its accent, took it for ‘Pull’. He sought confirmation from the patient and
asked, “Pull?” to which my friend nodded yes. He quickly administered the
local anesthesia to the patient and proceeded with the ‘treatment’.
After the job was done,
the patient was devastated to find a gaping hole instead of an aching tooth. He
started arguing with the doctor in half Punjabi and half English. Fast forward
to post-operation chaos: my friend, now one tooth lighter, was fuming in a mix
of broken English and sheer disbelief. His trusty sidekick rushed in, only to
realize that this whole debacle was just a 'Fill' vs. 'Pull' comedy of errors. Minus
one tooth, my friend vowed never to seek dental treatment abroad.
The actual article as published in the newspaper can be viewed by clicking on this link The Tribune Article
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