Jim had been having a lot of discomfort in his jaw and head and finally, after I returned from the East Coast, he decided he'd had enough and it was time to go to the dentist. So I made an appointment to See la Dra Marcela Sosa. You all would want to see her. She's like a sprite: small and delicate. But she has a smile that would light up billboards advertising dental services. It is huge, all you see of her, when it flashes across her face.
Here is a picture of her office from the outside:
I will also put up a photo of the inside after awhile. On the second floor, it's kind of like being in a tree house. But don't worry. Everything about the dental aspect of things is completely up-to-date.
Marcela thought Jim needed a root canal, so we went to an endontista in Xalapa. But first, Jim did something completely unexpected: he also went, on Marcela's recommendation, to an alternative practitioner to relieve some of the muscular stress around his jaw. I told Jim the alternative practitioner was a curandera, but probably not since a curandera deals in a bit of magic in the way of spells and potions. This curandera dealt, in Jim's case, only with touch.
Finding her took a bit of doing. We took the road out of Coatepec that heads towards a place called Las Trancas. A winding two-laner, it is a major truck route with two one lane bridges, so it is not exactly fast. Finally, we started to see clues that we might be getting close, and Jim said, let's try that driveway.
He was right, though it wasn't immediately obvious. We came to a little gravelly parking area on a rise. On each side was a semi-finished house. Down a steep path we saw a two story building that looked deserted except for one small light in a rear second floor room. A child in one of the upper houses told us that was where we could find our curandera. A black cat (true) sat outside.
Jim banged at the door for a while, then yelled up at the window. Finally a serious woman in her forties wearing a skirt and t-shirt and bare feet opened the door. She gave me the regulation kiss on the cheek and led us upstairs to her waiting room. Scattered on a table were stones and maybe crystals (didn't look like the crystals New Age folks use in the US) and some cards. I said they weren't tarot cards. I'm sure they weren't, but Jim didn't believe me, and I didn't know what else they could be. There were also a dead plant, a yoga magazine, a tourist magazine and the latest weekly rag from the local Catholic diocese. And some simple bamboo seats. We were invited to sit while she finished with her client.
Forty-five minutes later, her door opened and a very happy, smiling man walked out. Jim walked in. I did, too, to help with some translation, but was soon kicked out. The actual work had to be done solo.
And Jim was a happy man when she finished. He had had a headache when he went in, and it was gone, and he was more relaxed than I have seen him in I don't know how long. We chatted a bit with our curandera and her next patient, a tall, elegant young woman. We found out the curandera actually spoke very clear English, but she said she was too out of practice to rely on it. She's travelled to various places in the US. She said she could not understand the English in Tennessee.
Later on the endontista. The verdict is still out. But we did have a follow-up appointment with Marcela so she could make a mold for Jim's crown. On our way to this appointment, workmen were felling some trees between our Colonia and Coátepec. THe police had traffic blocked in case a tree fell where it shouldn't, and just before we could cross the work area, a tree did fall where it wasn't supposed to: right across the road. So we took the alternate route, from behind our Colonia, to Coátepec.
Here is a picture of the tree across the main road:
Here are a couple of pictures of us driving on the alternate route:
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