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Asia -- Cambodia -- Miscellaneous

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2007 Jul 06 [ Fri ]

My girlfriend gets her last wisdom tooth removed

For the past couple of years, she's had recurring problems with her wisdom teeth. Really, they had all grown in badly and needed to be removed, but of course it's quite a gruelling procedure at the best of times, and she found that she was in a lot of distress for a week or more after a single one was removed. So she put off handling each one as long as possible.

This week she got the final one done. The price was 15 USD; the procedure was fairly short and she seemed OK afterwards.

I had asked her to get a prescription for a sore on her tongue too; I observed that what she was prescribed was an antibiotic (amoxycillin), although a few days previously when we had asked at a pharmacy, the pharmacist gave her an anti-fungal cream (candida). She had been upset when I questioned the pahrmacist; all I wanted to know was why he thought it was candida when he never examined her mouth. Actually, I also wanted to point out that the preparation did nothing for the pain, which was her main complaint.

She was also prescribed ibuprofen as an anti-inflammatory, plus Efferalgan, a big fizzy tablet like an Alka-Seltzer containing paracetamol and codeine, for pain relief. Hmm, isn't ibuprofen the same thing as paracetamol? and isn't paracetamol very close to overdose in normal use?

The total price of the drugs was 7 USD. I bought them at a separate pharmacy (next to Lucky's on Sihanouk – recommended).

She felt well enough the next day to go to university and then to work, but continued to have pain, and when she had to attend a "briefing" (when she needed to sleep after her night shift!) her manager told her to go to the company clinic. They prescribed 5 different sets of pills, with no piece of paper to say who prescribed them, what they were for or how to take them, just a couple of scrawled lines on the plastic bags they came in. They also gave her an injection, but she doesn't know what it was. T said the price of all this was 20 USD, although the company was paying.

The company clinic appears to be some sort of ripoff. I urged her to check what they had prescribed with her dentist, but she was reluctant.

She's still in a lot of discomfort, and has to take the Efferalgan (codeine) several times a day, which is not really good for her (I doubt it improves her balance on a motorbike, for instance).

Overall I think her outcome is about the same here as it might have been in a developed country. There's a chance that the initial removal might be done more skilfully, or with better follow-up (I was surprised that no follow-up appointment is made to check healing), but a western country might well have made it impossible to get codeine, which really works.

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