The other night after dinner, I made the mistake of telling a story about when I had my wisdom teeth removed. "You have problems with your teeth?" my host family worried. "No, no," I assured them, "it's just something we do in America. Most of the college-age kids get them out. It's no big deal." "But why are you getting them out, then?" "Well, because sometimes they don't fit in your mouth and if you leave them in it will mess up your other teeth."
I decided it would be too complicated to try to talk about infections and to go into much more depth, but they kept asking me questions. "It's just something we do. No other reason. I'm fine, my mouth is fine. Everything is fine with me. Lots of people have it happen."
"Well," my host family said, "I have a friend and he has a -- what you call it? It takes pictures." "An X-ray." "Yes, an X-ray machine. He is a dentist as a hobby" (I really hope he meant profession) "and if you want, I could take you to him and he could take pictures of your teeth with this X-ray."
"No, really it's fine. My teeth are fine. I've been to the dentist since I had them out--" (a white lie, though one that I felt was completely necessary to keep them from worrying about my teeth) "--and they said everything's fine."
Their faces were lined with worry over my dental needs.
"Really? Because sometimes you need to see what other people say. A few years ago I went to different dentist and he found things that ...." I couldn't quite understand what was happening after that point.
Moral of the story:
Do not discuss unnecessary surgeries with people from foreign countries. It is confusing and only creates stress on their part over the fact that the person living with them has less than adequate dental health.
The end.
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