Last week in Togo, the Mercy Ships dental team treated their 4,000th patient since February. That announcement brought back a lot of memories for me – some good and some pretty awful really.
Perhaps strangely, it’s my third-world experience in the dental clinic that brings back the good memories. While the ship was in Ghana and Liberia, I ‘volunteered’ (how do you volunteer for something when you’re already volunteering anyway? Never-the-less…) to help out sterilizing instruments in the on-shore dental clinic once a week. It was a huge learning curve to identify all the various instruments the dentists and hygienists used, as well as to learn to process of sterilizing -all in a very challenging environment. For the duration of the outreach, Mercy Ships had been given the use of a couple of connecting rooms in the local hospital for our dental clinic (pretty routine). The hospital itself has irregular electrical power, only a few taps with running water, and no window – only cinder blocks for ventilation, and very minimal toilet facilities. Every day we set up our own generators to enable the dental team with clinical lights and to use their state-of-the-art equipment to treat the constant stream of patients seeking relief from their pain.
The most remarkable thing I came across was one day a man came in with extreme tooth pain and infection. I must say when Lawrence opened his mouth, the horrendous odour quickly spread throughout the room despite all the fans! Dr Keith, who has served in these conditions for many years, quickly identified an abnormality and sent Lawrence off to the ship for an immediate x-ray. The resulting story was astonishing.
The xray exposed a foreign body embedded in Lawrence’s jaw. Stunned, he told us about being attacked many years earlier, and how the culprits had stabbed him in the mouth. Sure enough, what was imbedded in his jaw was 2 inches of knife blade! It had only recently started acting up again after the initial injury. You can see it here.....
Dr Keith performed a simple 30 minute surgery under a local anaesthetic, and Lawrence was free from source of pain and infection. He took that blade home though!
Helping people like Lawrence receive such significant healing was a source of healing from my own bad experiences as a child. I had a hereditary condition which meant the enamel didn’t form properly on my baby teeth, so I had a huge number of fillings. Small child, slow drills, no pain relief; you get the picture. Should I mention I was actually banned from all the dental clinics in my area because I’d bite the hygienist's fingers? It is really significant to me that while I’m still abit of a nervous patient in the dental chair , I have been significantly more peaceful since I helped in the clinic (haven’t bit anyone’s fingers in years now ! J). God blessed me with emotional healing while I was intent on bringing physical healing to others. Now, isn’t that just like God?!
In Liberia there is only one dentist per one million people! The patients queued from the early morning hours, and were admitted to a waiting areas where one of the local translators would provide oral hygiene instruction. They’d also watch the Jesus film in their own language while they were waiting. Their history was taken, then they’d be placed in one of our four mobile dental chairs (mobile I the sense they were moved at the end of the outreach, not while the patient was sitting in it!) Mostly people had extractions, but often there were some very complex procedures to be done by the dentists. People’s teeth were so strong from eating tough food all their lives that it was physically exhausting for extractions, and sometimes the results of untreated cavities and fractures became literally life-threatening because of infection.
