Our First Visit to a Turkish Dentist

It was recently time for our six-month dental checkup. And – because many of our American readers in particular have been keenly interested in health care abroad – we thought we’d share the tale of how it went. The short version is, fantastic!

Making the Dentist’s Appointment

We double-checked the info from our insurance company to make sure we had everything right before making a move. Our plan doesn’t have dental providers in Turkey, so we could go anywhere we liked, pay the cost of the visit, and have it reimbursed. Then we got the name of a dentist in Istanbul from a Turkish friend of a friend. (We try to always have at least the name of a contact person for anywhere we’ll be for a while, and this is part of the reason.) With some trepidation, and with several phrases prepared, we called the dentist. Good news: she understood our Turkish! Bad news: she replied in Turkish. We panicked and began gibbering, but she switched immediately to English. We got an appointment for the following week. She gave us the price in advance, and texted us her address. It was in a part of Istanbul we didn’t know at all. So far, so good.

At the Dentist

John was hoping for an entirely uneventful visit, and Laurel was hoping for something interesting to post about. We both got what we wanted! The neighborhood the dentist was in, Teşvikiye, turned out to be easy to get to. Also, fabulous, but more on that soon. The office was super-fancy. Like Upper Westside fancy: we had to put covers on our shoes to walk on the beautiful wood flooring. The dentist was on the ground floor, in a converted apartment with lots of windows. We filled out some forms while she chatted with us. She wanted to know what the problem was, and we said, no, just a regular six-month cleaning.

Laurel went first. Background info: Laurel has good teeth. She likes to think it’s good karma, or just the universe’s recognition that she is really great. (Terrible eyesight evens things out.) The dentist and her assistant, both wearing masks, sat Laurel in the chair. The dentist did that thing where they poke at your gums saying numbers (We know a few numbers; yay us!) This procedure always feels to us very judgmental. Once she said, ‘Wow.’ And then she stopped and said, ‘Your teeth do not need cleaning. They are excellent. Better than excellent; you are perfect. Don’t come back for another year.’ [Finally, Laurel has outside confirmation, and from a reliable source.]

John is not quite as perfect, but his experience was also a pleasant one: they cleaned his teeth, checked his fillings, put in a rinse, and told him to come back in six months. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes. It was slightly humourous when they used the high pressure water cleaner and it threatened to run out of his mouth. But the assistant immediately buried his face in towels: problem solved (?). The dentist did not charge Laurel, and John paid $75. We expect the full cost of that to be reimbursed, and John has submitted the forms on the insurance company’s website. Fingers crossed the rest of it goes as smoothly. You’ll know if it doesn’t!

After the Dentist

Ok. So we know – and the dentist confirmed – that the bar for dental hygiene is low in Turkey. We’ve seen more mouths lacking their full complement of teeth than seems okay. But we’ve also traveled enough and talked to enough people that we know Americans are wrong about their health care system. It is not the only good one in the world (and it doesn’t have to cost so much either!). So we’ve been wondering. Can it be that we are maybe too uptight about this whole subject? So far in our lives, we have been extremely lucky with our health. That’s no guarantee for the future, of course. We’ll keep up our regular checkups, and we will always know where the nearest hospital is. But maybe we don’t need to be quite so obsessed as we were in the US.