So I was having some pain on the right side and decided to run down to Progreso to the dentist.  I have heard several good reports on dentists and thought I would go take a looksee.  Well Bandi wanted to go too so I got her to take her car and I paid for gas.  I told her I would call early to get her up.  I woke up at 4am on Wednesday morning but let her sleep for another 15 minutes before I called.

She was up when I got to Kingsville but not ready yet.  We got some Pepsi and ice and headed south.

We were almost to Harlingen before it got light and she knew how to get to Progreso.  We drove straight to the parking lot.  Nobody there to collect money, so we parked and walked across the bridge.

The Mexican Progreso was just waking up. People sweeping sidewalks and setting up jewelry stands and opening up stores and bars.  I took Bandi off to the side streets where tourist seldom go to see how common people live.  Wasn't too bad.  Streets were unpaved and rough and houses small and not much electricity.  I saw lights but not many a/c;s.  But the kids were clean and they had a school for them.  And the dogs on the street were pretty fat and happy.

We walked by a tortilla factory.  They had a pot of mash cooking about 4 foot in diameter and 3 feet deep.  Looked kinda nasty, like they were making whiskey.  Didn't smell very good either.  They had a chain link assembly line that were steadily making tortillas.

So I walked around front and bought 2 tortillas, one for me and one for Bandi.  She would not eat hers and I got them both.  They were fresh and hot and tasted pretty good.

Then we went to find her dentist.  Everybody else was opening except him.  Bandi wasn't really sure it was his office anyway.

Let me go back.  There were 100 or 150 dentists in that town.  They were on every street, upstairs and downstairs, in back rooms, everywhere you looked, dentists.  People on the street hawking dentists.

Well Bandi's dentist was still closed so she started down the street asking how much for a crown.  120, 120, 120,  finally a guy standing on the corner said $100.  Come on let's go.  His office was off an alcove kinda like a mall.  Very small sitting room with 4 chairs, a very small office with dental chair, another small room for making casts, and a bathroom.  The commode didn't have a lid but it was clean and smelled of disinfectant.  Bandi went first and wanted a root canal and crown.  I asked her if she cared if I stayed in the room and she didn't care, so I got a chair and sat down by her feet.  The dentist was a middle age man, slightly balding in front, didn't speak very much English.  But he turned on the light and had gloves and a mask and he started on Bandi very gently.  Bandi is tough and she just laid there and he worked on her for a long time.  Dr. Ulloa.  In a little while this tall good looking girl came in, Dr. Ulloa's wife.  She didn't speak any English but started mixing up stuff for casts of uppers and lowers.

Now I was watching Dr. Ulloa and he had this drawer that he kept his tools in.  There were 3 tools in a blue rectangular package and he had about 6 or 7 of those packages in that drawer.  But he would go through them one at a time looking for just the right tool.  When he got to the last one, he started backward looking for just the right tool.  When he got back to the first he started down the line a 3rd time.  Somewhere in the middle he found something that would work and would pull out that package and unseal it.  Now I don't know if they came sterile in those packages or if they washed them up in the back room, but he would unseal the package and pull out another tool.  Then he would need a drill or a small rat tail file.  He would pull out a package and stand there and look at it.   Like he had never seen that box before in his life and wondering what he was supposed to do with it.  But he would pull something out and go back to work.  It took a long time but he stopped and showed us Bandi's root when he got to it.  It was about a quarter of an inch long, thin like a needle or smaller and kinda slimy.  When he got through they took another impression and ordered a crown to go on that tooth.  We had to come back at 4pm for that.

Bandi went shopping and the Doc started working on my teeth.  The side where I was having a problem he said didn't need anything, nothing wrong, just clean it with peroxide.  But he did find a couple of teeth that needed root canals and went to work on them.  He deadened both sides of my mouth and really I never felt any pain at all.  Now I have had those done a few times and my doc in Kingsville drills it out, takes this big rat tail file and twists it around a few times and fills it back up and puts the light to it.  About 20 minutes and he is finished.

But this Doc took a long time, drilling with high speed drill, then filing with these little files and spending a lot of time putting polishing cream on the files.  Took more than and hour for the first one and not so long on the second.  I got tired of trying to stay still and gagged once or twice when stuff went down my throat.  But nothing bad.  I rinsed out and drank the water.  Tasted good to me.  He wanted to order a crown for me but that would have been a couple more hours after 4 so I told him I would come back in 2 weeks and let him work some more.

My bill was $320 exactly twice of Bandi's.

Then Bandi and I walked back to the border and paid 30 cents to get out of the country.  I bought some ear rings and Amphicile and the Doc gave Bandi a prescription for pain pills.  Bandi didn't want them but I bought them anyway for me and Bill.   Just in case we needed some good pills later.

We went to McDonalds for hamburgers and then bought some apples and oranges and honey.  Then we went back and walked back across the border.  By this time there were more people on the street and the street people were hustling us but not bad.  Bought some ear rings and a broom and got a shoe shine from a little kid.  There were a few indigent people sitting on the sidewalk with styrofoam cup and I would throw a quarter now and then.  We tried to find Sharon's dentist, Valdez, but couldn't ever find his office.  There were a lot of dentists in Progreso.  And a lot of people from all across the country.   All ages but mostly elderly.  They were walking slower than us.

So we went back to the office and I sat in the waiting room and he started grinding on Bandi trying to get the crown to fit.  Pretty soon an argument started and me and Mario went in.  Mario is the local interpreter between dentist and patient.  He doesn't speak very much English himself but nice enough young man.  The crown was too big, too tall.  The dentist ground on it until he had almost ground off the porcelain.  So he started grinding on the tooth across from the crown.  He didn't do that very much before Bandi got hot.  She told him, to grind on the crown but not on her good tooth across from it.  Bandi was right.  They tried to call the crown place but they were already closed for the day.  So we agreed to come back in one week and work on crowns.   So next Wednesday, I have a date with Bandi in Mexico again.  

She is really all right to be with once you get her away from her kids and her problems.  We had a good time.  

Never any pain, and no problems at all today for either one of us.  I talked to my friend Tom in Tulsa and he has friends that go to Mexico for dental work.  He said it is about 10% of the cost in the US.  Amazed me how many dentists were there in that one small town.

I didn't tell about the grill that had this animal cooking.  We had a long discussion if it was a goat or a dog.  It was really hard to tell.

I was pretty happy with my Mexico dental experience.  I need to learn some Spanish if I want to keep going down there.  Bandi thought the same thing.