First Day at the Clinic

The morning rush.

Interesting day.  We saw scheduled patients in the morning, and walk-ins in the afternoon.  We started at 8 a.m., took an hour for lunch, and finished at 3 p.m.  All in all, it wasn’t too stressful.  I did exams, oral surgery, and assisted Randy Gardner on endo and restorative.  I took notes on what materials he used, and made mental notes about where said materials were in the clinic. The surgery instruments were unfamiliar to me, but I got by.  The overhead illumination is not what I am used to and my glasses fogged up constantly with my mask on.  The humidity is so high.  I worked without a mask part of the time.

The Clinic.

Randy has an LED light on his glasses and I really need something like that.  I have a light source back in Spokane but would have a hard time putting my hands on it right now.  Luckily, he and I have about the same inter-ocular distance and his loupes are 2.5 magnification, which is the same as mine, so he may leave them with me when he goes home.  (I will pay him for them and he will get new ones when he gets home).  That would be VERY NICE.  You have to be able to see what you are doing, when performing dentistry!

I fractured off a lingual root tip on #15, and couldn’t see very well – the suction is marginal, and no assistant. He helped me get it out. It’s nice to have another set of eyes and hands and I’ll be a little anxious when he leaves.  Patrick and Kevin: I’ll be face timing you a lot for your second opinions.

In the morning, we took a half hour out of our schedule to go meet with President Tiuone at the Mission Office.  Had a nice visit with him. He is Tongan, but grew up in New Zealand.  He’s about 40, and has been President for a year or so. His wife has a big fibroma right in the philtrum of her upper lip.  But I asked the Mission Nurse about mentioning that I could remove it with my laser, and she said I couldn’t bring it up.  Sis. Tiuone is of “noble” blood, and the fibroma is a token of her standing in the culture.

There is a volunteer dentist coming in a month or so, and he asked us to provide him with a wish list.  I have half a dozen things on it and I am sure the list will grow.  Even basic things like caries detection dye predisone, and articulating paper holders, are non-existant.  We really can’t even get antibiotics or Rx strength analgesics.

Tomorrow is the day anyone from the community can come to the clinic, and it will be Triage.  They will come with a chief complaint, and a mouth full of time bombs waiting to explode.  We will do a lot of extractions.

Tonight is Home Evening for the Senior Missionaries.  I am going to take a nap before hand, for sure.

We We snuck in a quick visit to Tsunami Rock.

This rock started out at the beach, just beyond the bushes in the background behind the coconut palms.