Week 7 in Ghent: 3 Top Stories

Hi there! This week was my last "normal" week of my first set of classes! That is absolutely insane! Time is flying by! While it was a "normal" week, there isn't much to tell you about so instead, I want to share my top 3 stories.

Story #1: Going to the Dentist

So I realized this week that I haven't had a cleaning at the dentist for over a year and I noticed a white line between my bottom teeth on the inside so I was a little bit nervous and booked an appointment.

Just getting an appointment in the first place was not an easy task. Here's why:

1. All of the dentist websites are in Dutch.

2. I can't call any of the dentists' offices because I have an eSIM that doesn't include calls.

3. Dentists in Belgium are not like dentists in Canada. Most of the dental work that they do is the "serious" dental work and most offices don't do cleanings/checkups.

4. Most dental offices require that you are a resident of Belgium as dental care is part of the health care here. I am still in the process of getting my residency card

   1. I do however have Belgian health insurance through a health fund so that makes things slightly less difficult...

Then there's the issue of the very select few dental offices having availability at times when I'm not in class.

But I was determined so I got an appointment at a private dental clinic not too far from me that said they accept my insurance. So I went.

My appointment was at 3:00PM on Wednesday afternoon so I arrived at 2:45PM to fill out any paperwork or any of that stuff. The receptionist was confused when I didn't have a Belgian Residency Card but he reluctantly manually entered all of my information into the system anyway. I then gave him my insurance information and he said that it wasn't one of the options of the system but he would figure that out later and he told me to sit in the waiting room.

I sat in the waiting room for 50 minutes while one by one every other patient in the room was called out for their appointments. Finally, at 3:50PM a very Dutch woman, who didn't speak very much English came and got me and took me to the dentist's chair. As we walked into the room, she said to me, in broken English, "Extraction? Or Filling?". That was the first time my cortisol levels spiked. I replied to her that I was only here for a consultation and for a cleaning and she silently nodded and signalled for me to sit in the chair.

I sat in the chair and another Dutch woman, who I assume to be a dental hygienist in training or something similar, came into the room and stood next to the chair. The two women spoke to each other in very fast Dutch, none of which I could understand so I sat there in the chair, quite nervous, hoping that the message got across that I was not there for an extraction or a filling.

The first woman started poking around in my mouth and looking at my teeth while rambling to the second woman and all I understood for the next couple of minutes was when the second woman said to me "Good teeth" in the thickest Dutch accent I've ever heard. The next cortisol-spiking moment was when the first woman picked up and turned on what sounded like a drill and it was at this point where I asked for her to explain what was going on.

I only understood about 1 in 4 words coming out of the first woman's mouth but what she kept saying over and over was the word "calc". She said I had calc on a few of my teeth. "Calc" was not a word I was familiar with so I asked if she meant "cavity" to which she said, "No, calc, like the little stones in your mouth". She said, "I remove little stones, it make eating better".

At this point, I felt like I was invested, I had no idea what was going on, all I knew was that there were little stones in my mouth and she was going to remove them with a drill sort of thing.

So still not understanding what was about to happen to my mouth I asked if this was an expensive procedure, hoping to gauge what to expect. The second woman told me that with insurance, this is covered once a year. In complete oblivion, I figured that if this is something that Belgians do every year, it can't be something so crazy so I opened my mouth wide and hoped for the best.

So not only was there this stabby drill tool in my mouth but there was also a water spraying tool and the suction straw thing. The water spraying tool was powerful, I mean so powerful that I was getting drenched. There was water all over my face and shirt and streams of water running down my neck all while my gums were getting stabbed by a drill and my mouth was getting suctioned dry. All of this happening, while in my mind, I had no idea what was happening to my teeth. For all I knew she was going to completely reshape my teeth or file them off entirely, or maybe do a couple of extractions while she was at it.

The water spraying was getting so messy that the second dental hygienist covered my already soaking shirt in paper towel and handed me a couple of sheets. But it's not like I could dry anything because I couldn't move if I wanted to leave with my tongue or cheeks unharmed from this drill and the water sprinkler was still going at full force. It got so messy that the second dental hygienist got out the big suction device that looked like the crevice tool on a household vacuum. That part was terrifying, because she would move the vacuum around to get all of the water and I could see my blood being splattered onto it.

The drilling part was finally done and from a brief examination of my teeth with my tongue, I was pretty sure that all of them were still there. Now it was the part where the dental hygienist used the super pointy hook thing to scape between my teeth. I usually hate this part at the dentist but I was just glad that she was done with the power tools. She scraped and scraped at the one part where I noticed the white line between my teeth and she showed me the super pointy hook thing and said "See, this calc". But all that I could see on the hook was my blood.

The power tools came back as she was polishing my teeth but I was happy to have some less pointy instruments in my mouth now.

She finally took the tools out of my mouth and the second woman handed me a glass of water so I took that as my cue to sit up. The first woman handed me a hand mirror to look at my results which is also something that has never happened to me at the dentist. But I looked in my mouth, verified that all my teeth were still there then looked at my gums that were ALL bleeding. This was like the moment at the hairdresser when the hairdresser asks if you like your haircut and you hold back your tears and say yes but in this case, the tears were from the past 15 minutes of trauma and all the blood loss your mouth is experiencing. Neither of the women really said anything to me so I said "Am I done?" to which they nodded and I went back out to reception to pay.

Back at the reception, the receptionist said "Your total for today is three fifty" in a very confident voice. I said "Three hundred and fifty???", thinking in my head "To get my mouth and gums tortured????". But thankfully no, the total was 3 euros and 50 cents. I'm not sure which price is more unbelievable.

Update to the story: I have also figured out that "calc" refers to calcified plaque or tartar, a very normal thing on your teeth if you haven't gotten them cleaned in too long. Just in case you were wondering :)

Story #2: Aquacup

This week was our last week of qualitative genetics as we are switching to quantitative genetics and a practicum for one week before finishing the course. So our lovely genetics professor arranged for this really fun activity.

She designed the "Aquacup" which was 20 genetics questions hidden around the campus that we had to find and answer in a given amount of time. There were QR codes hidden that we would have to scan that would show us the question which we would answer on a sheet of paper then a map would pop up with the location of the next clue.

When she was originally planning this activity, the weather looked beautiful and it was going to be a lovely day for this. But Belgium had a change of heart and it absolutely poured rain all morning.

But that made it all the more competitive and serious! We all sprinted through the rain trying to finish the fastest and win, as we were told there would be prizes!

A twist to this was that there were different difficulties of questions, easy, medium, and hard.

If you got an easy question right, it is worth +10 but if you get it wrong it's worth 10. For medium questions, it's +20 or -20 and for the hard questions, it's +30 or - 30. You can choose to not answer a question and that is worth 0 points.

So here is where our group went wrong, we were too confident and chose to submit every question, we didn't "scratch" any. We came in second place. The group that came in first place only answered 15 of the 20 questions:(

But we were very proud to have come in second and it was a super fun way to end this part of the course. The professor for the second part of the course is not nearly as enthusiastic so I definitely miss our first prof.

Here is a picture of me & my group nervously submitting our answer sheet. We were the first group to finish by about 35 minutes.

Story #3: The Lamb of God

Firstly, as a brief aside, I’ve decided to alternate weekends between travelling around Europe and staying home to be responsible and stay on top of my school work. So this weekend I’ve stayed in Ghent, but part of that deal to myself is that I will check something off of my Ghent bucket list on the weekends that I am here. So on Sunday I went to St. Bavo’s church and did an augmented reality tour of the crypt then got to see the Ghent Altarpiece after learning its whole history. This was super cool. I think St. Bavo’s might be my new favourite church, even more so than the Cologne Cathedral! I know, that's crazy

So first let me explain what an “augmented reality” tour is because I had no idea. Basically, you get this super cool accessory and it allows you to see holograms of really old people and objects that tell you all about the history of the church.

Here is said super cool accessory:

And here's some of the really cool things I learned:

I learned that Ghent is famous for the Ghent Altarpiece, also called The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb or The Lamb of God. This was a painting done by the Van Eyck brothers in 1432 and it has a CRAZY history.

It is recognized as one of the most influential paintings ever made. It has 12 panels, I understand that most altarpieces only have 3 so that is already impressive. But wait until you hear about all of the unintentional travelling it's done! It was stolen by the French in 1789 during the French Revolution when the French wanted to build an impressive museum in Paris by stealing a bunch of valuable art. Then it was returned by the Duke of Wellington. When the art piece returned to Ghent, there was a lack of money situation so an art dealer sold a couple of panels to the king of Prussia. It ended up in Germany during the First World War then they were forced to return it as compensation. In the Second World War it was taken again but this time to a salt mine in Austria along with countless other priceless art pieces. When Hitler lost the war, he ordered for all of these art pieces to be destroyed but luckily the Americans saved the day and rescued all of the art. So then it came back to Ghent again and all of the panels were back together until a thief stole one of the panels! So now it is mostly all together and has had some very impressive restoration work done. But it was a really cool sight to see! And my brief spiel is only a fraction of the cool stuff about this painting and I'm no historian but here's the Wikipedia page if you want more history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghent_Altarpiece

The church itself has a really cool history too. It was built over hundreds of years and was remodelled a lot over those years to better fit the church styles at the time. Just look at how gorgeous the interior is! It’s huge!!

So there you have it! The top stories from my week!! Next week I am starting the end of my Genetics class so get ready for a lot of white lab coat laboratory content next week!