Eye For Eye, Tooth For Free

I have been on an impressive medical circuit considering my accrued stay in Taiwan amounts to but a month; I have already seen the dentist, an Eastern medicine practitioner, a massage therapist, a regular practitioner, and an orthopedics specialist. I am off of bicycling, skateboarding, and hiking, but I am on swimming, wearing a pelvic girdle, and special insoles. I mention this not to incite pity, rather recognition of, and familiarization with, the medical system I am dealing with here. The fact that I have been flushed through a deluge of tests without any waiting lists, or any substantial debts to pay, says something about the way things work in Taiwan. Time is money, the per diem disposable expenditure is low, and the amount of people requiring service is overwhelming.

Case in point. You often hear wisdom tooth horror stories, however my experience was quite nice. The 'dentist office' hosting the procedure was an old apartment conversion, fitting in three dentist chairs more than capacity, and falling significantly below anything considered hygienically passable by Western standards. That being said, from the time I entered the clinic door to the time I left (which included registering at the front desk sans identification) approximately 45 minutes elapsed. The dentist who removed my tooth is a friend of Stephanie's family, he initially did not charge me anything (!), but after an awkward "we have to have record of this" from one of the nurses, he retorted; "Fine, half price then", which amounted to about $50.00 CAD. Not too bad.


In high school we used to play a game called 'Murder Ball', it is quite simple to play. Pick two students, place them at two opposing ends of a lengthy corridor, give one of them a ball, then make the other one turn around and close his eyes, and you know the rest. The result of Murder Ball would sometimes look like the picture below.
In fact this is just the product of suction treatment, it is a painless, even comfortable, way of alleviating tight muscles.