DENTAL VISIT AND UNION SQUARE
I have two dentists, an Asheville dentist, Dr. Martin, who checks me twice a year when I have my teeth cleaned who fills cavities and makes crowns, and an Indian Delhi dentist, Dr. Kakar, who does dental implants, which Dr. Martin doesn‘t do. Dr. Kakar is a very good dentist and does dental implants at about 1/3 the cost of Asheville dentists who do do implants.
The sad story is that my teeth are prone to all kinds of problems. Two many cavities lead to crowns at about $1000 apiece. I thought that crowns were permanent, but alas, after ten years or so my gums may recede and a cavity sneak in and the crowns need to be replaced. Or the crown may finally fail and the tooth can abscess requiring extraction of the tooth which leads to a nightmare of one kind of bridge or another anchored to teeth which also might fail or the final indignity, dentures themselves. Why can‘t we grow new teeth as the old ones fail as some animals do? Back when we were hunter gatherers and didn‘t eat sweets and old age was 40 and we died at 50 out teeth remained intact. We just live too long.
But my story of two dentists is more complicated than that and this last week became even more complicated. This is because the economics of dental implants means that it is cheaper to go to India to get an implant, even with the cost of the flight and a place to stay. So really, every time Dr. Mynatt yanks a tooth, I have an excuse to go to India. I love to go to India with dental work as an excuse. Both Dr. Martin and Dr. Kakar understand this and neither is irritated with me or jealous of the other.
Since retirement I have gone to India six times, every other year, and had a tooth implant each time. When I hear that a teeth is a goner my spirits rise because I have another excuse to go to India. I certainly don‘t want to fall into the trap of getting dental insurance because that would keep me here. I know that Dr. Kakar is not the cheapest Indian dental implanter, but I trust him. I am guessing that there are other parts of the world where dental implants are cheaper but I don‘t want to hear about them. I want to go to India.
But that brings up my recent complications and the reason for my trip last week to New York City to get my teeth looked at. Of course, I like to go to have an excuse to go to New York, also, and the trip last week was worth it even without the dental work, which is lucky, because my visit to Dr. Kakar was unsatisfactory for both of us.
It can be inconvenient to have your dentist be 10,000 miles away when something goes wrong. But in this case it almost worked out. The titanium post that screws into one of the titanium screws that Dr. Kakar screwed into my jawbone three months ago came loose while eating tough bread in Haarlem, Netherlands, and finally came out. I wrote Dr. Kakar and asked what I should do. He wrote back to say he would be in New Jersey for five days giving a lecture at the Rutgers School of Dentistry and if I could be in New Jersey, six hundred miles from Asheville, he could take care of me. It turned out that I was going to my granddaughter‘s graduation in Raleigh, a third of the way to New York, just at that time and had enough Amtrak points to ride the train free to New York along with my daughter, Susie, who wanted to see an exhibit there at the Guggenheim Museum.
So on Monday at 1 p.m. I was going to meet Dr. Kakar in Morristown, New Jersey, where he had found a dental chair that he could use for an hour. I went to Penn Station early, which was lucky, because when I went to buy my ticket, the New Jersey Transit train from Penn Station to Morristown was not running because of too much congestion on the tracks. I would have to walk a couple of long blocks to another train system call PATH which would take me to Hoboken where the New Jersey Transit trains were still running. The ticket for all of that was only $6. I got to PATH and then to Hoboken and got on the right train to Morristown, but at this point I was running late and was hungry. The ride to Morristown took an hour. When I got there I gulped a gyro very quickly and then tried to book an Uber, which I have only done one time before. The Uber wouldn‘t get there till 1:15 and I would be a half hour late for the dental appointment. There was a taxi stand outside station but no taxis. And then I saw a private taxi, Eric‘s Taxi Service, with Eric in a white undershirt inside. It turned out that he was on the way to the bank and didn‘t want to stop, but did, and once we got to know each other he told me the story of one time putting off a ride for a few minutes and losing the ride. From then on he would accept the ride first and do his other business later. He was happy to get $25 from me for a five mile ride (which I thought was exorbitant, but I was desperate) and then go to the bank.
So I was only five minutes late and there was Dr. Kakar, who was flying out to India right after taking care of me, and was in a hurry. He turned on the drill and with a loud whine worked away doing something. But it turns out that he was replacing the glass crown that he made in his office at 9 in the evening in Delhi when I was due to fly out at 4 the next morning when the laboratory made crown which never arrived. Now he had a chance to replace the glass crown with a permanent crown. But then, so my surprise he was done. He did screw in the post on one implant but couldn‘t put on the crown because the tooth had shifted and the crown which I had been carrying around in my pocket for three months no longer fit. And he couldn‘t put the crown on the other implant because the gum had healed over and the office that he had borrowed wasn‘t equipped to do surgery. And besides that, he was in a hurry with a friend in the waiting room waiting to drive him to the airport.
His solution was for me to come to India again, which suited me, except that as I age I wonder when my hips or knees will give out and I won‘t be able to make the trip. I was hoping to be all done with my current implants on this visit. Dr. Kakar had hoped so, too.
I didn‘t want to try to find a ride back to the Morristown train station so when Dr. Kakar offered me a ride to the station I gladly accepted. But then his driver friend said it would be just as quick to drive to a station near my dentist‘s hotel where he was going to pick up his bags. But it turned out that the ride took an hour and I was no closer to Penn Station than Morristown had been. But at last I was on the train. And with the new post I could at least chew better and could now look forward to a trip to India.
But that was only half the day. By the time I got back to Penn Station I was worn out. Susie met me and we walked to Union Square. There were fold out yellow metal tables and chairs all around Union Square for people to sit at during the late afternoon and vendors of all kinds selling stuff around the park and a band. For two hours we sat there and watched people walking by.
Then we went to Madison Square Park where there was an outdoor cafe and endless tables with people sitting and enjoying the evening.
And then to top off the day we went to nearby Saravanna Bhavan, our favorite South Indian restaurant in Delhi, a chain, that I have eaten at in Paris and in three different locations in London where we had a South Indian Thali, a round plate with puries and rice with a circle of ten different side dishes including curd and a dessert. And then, satisfied we went back to Leeann and Tony‘s place and fell asleep.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 