At the Dentist

As I have previously mentioned, we have an excellent dentist here in Grecia - Dr. Marco Vega Quesada. Again, here is his card:

His modern office is located near POPS on the second floor and across from the central park and cathedral. A plus is that he is bilingual, although his office staff is not. He also works at our Grecia Caja hospital, San Francisco de Asis. He and all his staff are so personable, kind and caring. Great view of the park from the treatment rooms.

I had my third visit with him this Wednesday for gum surgery. All my appointments so far have been late afternoon (4:30 pm). This means that quite often it is dark when I leave his office (this being the tropics after all). We don’t drive in the dark so Lance drops me off and I taxi home. Reasons for not wanting to drive in the dark: narrow, winding roads; few if any sidewalks and lack of shoulders; people, dogs, chickens walking on the roads, lack of street lights and so on. Obviously not all of Costa Rica is like this, but it is in our area and we prefer to leave the driving to the taxis. 

This particular appointment was over an hour long and I left with a mouthful of stitches and cotton batting on one frozen side, instructions to rest, avoid the sun, don’t drink hot beverages and take the prescribed medications. It was dark out by now.

So here’s the funny part. There’s a large farmacia (pharmacy) near his office and the taxi stand. In I went, handed over my script and was handed back a pack of pain killers, mouth spray and a large needle with vial! I thought ... am I supposed to inject myself? That’s for sure not going to happen. Then I remembered - in Costa Rica pharmacies provide a lot more services then just dispensing pills and selling shampoos. They will also give injections.

So I was motioned into the back of the farmacia, had my blood pressure and heart rate recorded, then into another room - up on the table and the deed was done. I’m assuming the shot was antibiotics - the doctor explained everything to me but I think I missed that part so I was kind of shocked when I saw the “giant” needle. Poor Lance - I had phoned him to say I was not yet in a taxi but in a farmacia waiting to have a shot of some kind, but I couldn’t talk very well with the freezing and batting or even explain why this was going to happen to me. I was a bit addled!

Anyway, taxi home and I got to see all the wonderful Christmas light displays on the houses in our neighbourhood.