5th Clinic Day

Day two at the clinic by the Guatemalan border.  Its cooling down at bit, what a relief.  A nice group of patients today. Similar to yesterday, most needing or wanting extractions.  Several wanted fillings, but the teeth were so badly decayed, they were told the teeth needed to be extracted.  One lady wanted a lower molar pulled because ever since she had a filling placed in it by a local dentist it had hurt.  The tooth probably should have been pulled at that time.  I also ended up pulling her two upper front teeth.  Very deep decay, at first she wanted fillings, but she and I agreed that the teeth needed to come out.  She will get a stayplate or flipper in Guatemala.   BTW, we saw our second stayplate, (a plastic removable partial to replace missing front teeth) with gold stars in the two front teeth!  Rochell got a nice picture of her smile.

Dr. Dan with one of his patients.

We had a little 6 year old come in with severe decay.  All of her front baby teeth were decayed to the gumline and starting to abscess.  Mom and I agreed that they needed to come out.  In this case, (no cooperation) it takes 4 people to hold her down and steady, I numb the area and pull the teeth as quickly as I can.  4 teeth….3 seconds.  We named ourselves the “scream team”.  No pain, but she was very scared. 

This is Rob, Zach’s dad.  He is a contractor taking a break from the building project.  We put him to work as a member of the “scream team”, and applying fluoride on the kid’s teeth.

On our way back, it rained! And, it is at least 20 degrees cooler.  What a blessing.  Our evening was very pleasant.  Maybe more rain tomorrow as well.  Oh, we did find out why we are seeing practically no men.  They are all harvesting their crops.  We heard that the small time farmer has to walk up to two hours to get to his little plot of land.  Theirs is a hard life.

    

This is how mamma’s carry their babies.