The Day I Met The Tooth Fairy
One day many years ago when I was a small boy I was playing rounders’ at school and disaster struck. As I was stood waiting eagerly for my turn to bat the boy in front swung his bat back and caught me full blow in the mouth. Blood covered the playground and my front tooth was hanging down below my bottom lip held in by no more than a millimetre of the root.
The dental hospital were great and did all they could to save the tooth but unfortunately the root died and I was left with a dis-coloured grey front tooth. The dentist didn’t want to crown it as it was still growing.
By the time I reached my mid-teens I had been through the wars playing rugby and so didn’t see the point getting my tooth fixed, it would probably get broken again and what with my scar on my forehead from a football accident, my bent nose from having it broken so many times and my cauliflower like ears from scrum-aging it seemed to fit in quite well so I left it.
Fast forward 12 years or so and here I am in Shenzhen with my wedding to look forward to this year and suddenly the thought of having a grey tooth on my wedding photos doesn’t seem very appealing.
But what do I do, I am in China! I have heard plenty of horror stories about Chinese dentists and witnessed first-hand how the medical care here isn’t the best so the thought of putting my big day in the hands of somebody who may or may not be qualified was a real worry.
Step forward Dr. Zac Morse from Dental Bauhinia. Zac is probably the most qualified dentist in mainland China with numerous dental qualifications and years of experience.
I was telling Zac about my big day coming up and he couldn’t wait to help and get started on this grey tooth.
I started with a consultation and x-rays where we found the crown on the tooth next to my grey tooth(fitted by a Chinese dentist after a recent motorbike accident) had been poorly fitted and the gap left would easily get clogged with food and bacteria and likely lead to future oral hygiene problems. It needed changing for sure.
Zac gave me a couple of options, crown the dead tooth to match my existing teeth colour or bleach all my teeth white and then crown both my front teeth to match the new pearl white colour. There was no choice in my mind, if you are going to do something you may as well do it right so I agreed to have all my teeth bleached first then get my two front teeth crowned.
The teeth bleaching process lasted a couple of hours and was a little uncomfortable but the results were amazing as you can see on the attached pictures.
Straight away people noticed the difference and the job was only half done. A couple of weeks later I went back and had my dead tooth filed down and impressions taken of my two front teeth. What happened next was unexpected and proved how Dental Bauhinia really are prepared to go the extra mile to be the best.
Zac took me to a secret location where a German company make crowns to send back to Germany. Now I don’t know much about crowns but I know Germans make the most reliable cars so on that basis I guessed this must be good.
In the secret location the German owners with years of experience in the industry did the colour matching for my crowns and I went away excitedly waiting for my new front teeth.
A week later Zac called me to tell me my crowns were ready and were perfect. Off I went back to Dental Bauhinia at Coco Park and here I am today with my new front teeth.
Thanks you so much Zac, my confidence has shot up 100%. I can smile again.
If you have any dental worries at all then Zac is the person to call. He is friendly and helpful and I am sure would not hesitate to answer your questions and invite you in to his beautiful modern surgery for a consultation.
Call Zac on 13670038844 or email him at zacmorse@gmail.com
Dental Bauhinia address – 9th floor, Block B, Shenzhen international chamber of commerce tower, 138 first Fuhua rd, Futian.
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Wow Jason massive improvement, congrats!
Nice pearlies Jason!
I have two stories to tell about dentistry in China, and these stories are polar opposites.
First the good one. Four years ago in Dalian I broke a cusp off a molar. After looking on an expat BBS, I chose a particular lady. Before starting her own practise, she worked for a German dentist in Beijing for 25 years. And it showed. She said all the things I expected her to say, her clinic was spotlessly clean, and she followed Western dental hygiene protocols. She cleaned up the broken cusp, took a dental impression, fitted a temporary cusp and had a new cusp made in the lab from German metals. A week later she spent three hours carefully fitting the cusp. And the all-up fee for this? Just RMB500. I was shocked by the low price. My dentist in my home country looked at the job and said “I couldn’t do a job that good for any price”.
Recently my dentist in my home country pointed out a hole in the load-bearing part of a molar. Thinking back to my wonderful experience in Dalian, I declined to have him fill it, and decided to have it fixed in Shenzhen instead.
A friend of mine told me that there’s a dental clinic below his place, so on Saturday I went there. Wow. I am really struggling to say anything good. For a start, the place was covered in the grime everything gets in China, and I saw no sign that there was any rigour in hygiene. Everything was old and beaten up. I’ve seen petshops back home that looked (and were) cleaner and brighter. Now I have no dental training, but what I’ve read is that for problems in the non-loadbearing front teeth, by all means use resin fillings, because the colour can be matched to the tooth. But for load-bearing areas on molars, amalgam fillings are still preferred. They take load much better than resin fillings, and in clinical tests, last nearly twice as long.
This clown was determined to use a resin filling. He had no idea of the pros and cons of various filling materials for various applications. When I told him I wanted an amalgam filling, he said “but no one does it in China any more”. That doesn’t mean a resin filling is better, it’s just an indication that the dental profession is collectively drinking the same delusional Kool-Aid. His final argument was “but the resin’s made in Japan”. Where it’s made is secondary to how it’s used, and the one thing I don’t want to be doing is having to teach dentistry to the dentist! (I later read that one of the advantages of amalgam fillings is that it’s much more tolerant of procedural errors, whereas there are several very important things that have to be done right in order to get a good resin filling). And the price for filling a 2mm hole? RMB250. What? Even allowing for inflation and Shenzhen being a more expensive city, I just can’t see how to reconcile the fees for these two procedures.
After this little experience there was no way I wanted this backstreet cowboy anywhere near my mouth, and I left.
I really don’t know what to do now. I *know* from my Dalian experience that there are dentists who know what they are doing, and give real value for money. I just don’t know how to find one. So if anyone can recommend an affordable dentist who knows what they’re doing, then please, tell me!
Oh and Jason, thanks for your story, and all the best for your wedding!
Hi
Give Zac a call. He is an awesome dentist. 13670038844