I love painkillers

I just got my third wisdom tooth pulled today. It's the first time I've been to the dentist in Poipet. The dentist was Thai. He spoke Thai. No English. No Khmer. Thai. His assistant was Khmer so we did the whole convo about my tooth through translation.

We chatted about how I heard he was a good dentist and had cared for many children who live in a local orphanage. Since I heard he was a good man I decided to come and see him about my tooth. I said that the clinic looked very clean and asked how he cleaned the equipment. You have a machine? That's very good. (I didn't know what else to ask about the machine so I just prayed....) Next we talked about the tooth.

He looked in my mouth and agreed that it would be no problem to pull my tooth. Just under ten dollars for the extraction, a couple of dollars for pills (NGO special price) and fifteen minutes later I was done.

Everything was numb and beautiful until the drugs started to wear off... I couldn't remember what colour pill was for stopping infection and which one was meant to be for inflammation so I just downed a handful of Panadine Forte (well.. three of them) nursed my jaw with some ice and waited. Soon afterwards... bliss.

I often get questioned about this at airports because I do the Thai/ Cambodian border crossing frequently... but even if this sounds dodgy I want to declare: Drugs are wonderful.