Day 5

Exhausted. 

It's definitely been a long week and it was hard to get up this morning. 

Today was pretty exciting though because Dr. Espinoza took Sami, Eugenio and Yoonah with her to the mountains to do extractions. They saw 25 patients and did 30 extractions. They shared their experience and said that the people who live there don't have running water. Yoonah also said that they don't have toilets, but instead have a hole in the ground covered by a toilet. Her story reminded me of what I've seen in Vietnam. They also said that many of them were really scared, more so than the ones we have seen at the clinic, probably because they have never been or even seen a dentist in their entire life. 

Clinic was super busy, we saw 38 patients and did 20+ fillings, prophies, the usual. It was the first day we finally had all four chairs operational at the same time. I was lucky enough to have two patients that came from the village who had never seen a dentist before. They were very scared, nervous and anxious. I used the counting technique, which worked very well. They were sisters and were so cute! It was really sad to see the younger girl's teeth, which were mostly, if not all, bombed out. She was already missing her four permanent maxillary anteriors and needed almost all of her lowers extracted. Seeing her teeth as well as others, some of who actually ask to have their teeth extracted, made me wonder if what we are doing will actually help them in the long run, considering their constant soda and poor oral hygiene habits. Well, we can only do so much and we tried our best to prevent caries from going deeper and taking them out of pain. I think the fact that we constantly come back is good though. The ideal thing would be to have dental care in Guaimaca be self-sustainable, of course. 

In the afternoon, I helped Yoonah with a class I composite. She was very good knew all the steps, which she learned from her awesome mentor Hayley. I also helped Eugenio with a composite restoration. He worked on a young boy and it was his first experience working on a posterior in a small mouth, which we all know can be difficult because the patient constantly keeps trying to close onto the hand piece.

We had dinner with Jenny's roommates Alisha and Helen, who are teachers at the girls' school that I previously mentioned. We had fun chatting with them about being in Honduras, bug bites, and playing mafia. In Honduras, it's not recommended for girls to walk alone after dark. So we walked them home and visited their house for a bit, which was very nice and home-y. They each have their own room and two bathrooms. They said they mostly stay at home on weekends watching tv, doing laundry, and cooking, because there is not much to do around Guaimaca. The house that they stay at is owned by the sisters, and they stay there for free because they work for the sisters. Jenny said her least favorite thing is doing laundry, because they have to wash it by hand, scrubbing it against stone, and she always gets soaked when doing it. They have the cutest and sweetest dog who was very excited to see us. 

 

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