I figured I would sum up what I did this afternoon in the dentist's office while the others continued the manual labor we began in the morning. There is a visiting dentist (from Montreal, Canada) helping out at El Proyecto every afternoon this week. Common Hope has a dental assistant, Ana Beatriz, that has been with them for 8 years and loves to help out the new/temporary doctors. Unfortunately, there was quite a language barrier between "La Dentista" and Ana...The visiting dentist spoke no Spanish, and Ana spoke very little English. I have been placed in the office every afternoon to assist with translating for the the dentist, Ana, and the patients. Today was my first day...

I'd never even considered going into dentistry so I knew very little about the language and techniques dentists use (in English or Spanish). Putting it more simply, I did not expect that our first patient would require a root canal in one of his two front teeth. The 30-something-year-old man had come into the dentist office in order to have his tooth fixed since he had chipped it recently. However, this was not an ordinary chip...half his tooth had fallen out and the rest appeared somewhat discolored. Upon further inspection, the dentist noted that the tooth was almost entirely dead. I translated between Ana, the dentist, and the patient as they discussed the two options available; either remove the dead nerve of the tooth in order to prevent further decay (a root canal), or remove the tooth entirely. The consensus was to go ahead with the root canal in order to salvage whatever was left of the dying tooth.

Ana hurried around the office, weaving back and forth between the empty dentist chairs on either side of the chair in which the patient was reclining (not comfortably, I might add). I guess Ana decided that I should take over the assistant job since she needed time to prepare all of the materials that would be necessary for such an intricate procedure. Within 20 minutes, I was in charge of suction and x-rays. Since I was able to really see the procedure up close, I noted the appearance of the teeth that were not receiving much attention...he was missing a canine, two of his molars were entirely black, and I counted at least 5 teeth that were missing entirely. The dentist explained that the state of this man's mouth was probably caused by a combination of lack of dental hygiene, lack of flouride exposure (since it is not administered in drinking water in Guatemala), and a diet lacking calcium.

The root canal was a really interesting procedure...one that requires a lot more finesse than I would have ever imagined. The patient is returning tomorrow to have a permanent crown placed over his tooth in order to protect the plastic tubing that now resides in the canal that the dead nerve was removed from.

Since the root canal took longer than expected, we only had time for one more patient this afternoon. A pretty young girl of only 17 walked into the office shyly and explained that she was here for a cleaning. The dentist was surprised because usually people will only go to the doctor when they have a problem, rather than for proactive reasons. Even more surprising, the girl had last had her teeth cleaned this past September! That is more often than I go to the dentist! She had beautiful teeth and a very pretty smile. It was really incredible to see such an enormous difference between the two patients.