Dentist in Brazil

This morning Graciano and I went to the Dentist. There is a Medical post near the entrance of the city that offers free services, if you get there early at least. I had to bring a girl from the orphanage there last week when I saw a sign that mentioned that along with offering emergency medical service, they also have a dentist a few days a week.



Here is the sign that is so professionally posted on the wall. It says, "Attention users, numbers for the Dentist are given at the post at 6 am but you must wait with your number here!" So what I get from this sign is that you must arrive at 6 am to get a number and then wait until your number is called. Is that what you get from it too?
So Graciano and I arrive at 6 am, and while we are in the tropical country of Brazil believe it or not at 6 am it is cold! There is no one to give us a number, and it fact there is no one else there that would even want a number. So we were told to sit and wait a little while.



You can see from this picture that we arrived when it was still dark and just waited. While waiting to find out when we can get a number we read a little and played a game. Finally a man comes up to us to say that the receptionist will not arrive for another 30 minutes and we don't know if the dentist will show up today. What? She is scheduled to come but they don't know if she will? hahaha only in Brazil.
We decided to wait a little longer for the receptionist to show up and see if she knew anything. Then all of a sudden my friend Adimir shows up and asks why I am there so early. Well, the sign clearly says to get there early. He says to me, "No you don't have to come early, you know Junior Reis (politician) and he says anyone from the orphanage gets in first. While the child I brought wasn't from the orphanage it still worked because I am from there. Needless to say we left and went back later.




This is the emergency medical post of the city. If I was sick, this is where I would want to go to for sure. Anyway we got there and everyone knew that I was from the orphanage so we got right into the dentist. She looked in his mouth and pulled out his tooth. We were in and out in seriously 2 minutes. I couldn't believe it! Sometimes being a gringo has it's advantages here.



Don't worry I took good care of him after his tooth was pulled. Plus he said that it didn't hurt, he was just acting for the camera. So this is my story of going to the Dentist in Brazil. Everything is always an adventure and never goes as planned. But that is part of the fun of it.