Trying Dentistry

(having prayer before our ground breaking)


(the instruments)


Nurse, pharmacist, doctor, anesthesiologist and just recently, dentist. I get to experience a little bit of all of this here in Palawan. Just basics obviously, but the other day Josh, another SM here and I got to be dentists. A few days earlier Michelle and I had a patient come for something, I don’t remember, maybe a cough and cold, and when Michelle asked him if he had any other complaints, he said, “Oh yeah, my teeth really hurt.” Well, upon closer examination, we found a mouth full of loose teeth, corroded gums, and a swollen jaw. Looks like an abscess. So we whipped out our handy dandy book Where there is no Dentist and decided that yes, this man did have an abscess. So on antibiotics he went and 3 days later, we dug through our dental supplies, studied our book more on how to do injections and extractions and talked our strategy over, relaying what we each knew to each other and comparing notes.




A day or 2 earlier I had the opportunity to talk to my dad, a dentist, on the phone. He gave me a run down. Josh, just before coming, had a family friend who is a dentist that showed him some extractions. So our game plan: I was going to do the injections and Josh would do the extractions. So, with our brave patient set up in front of the clinic, we began our first experience as dentists. Saying a group prayer and switching our headlights on, we began. Michelle was close by with our book open, reading aloud to remind us and helping to make sure we weren’t missing anything. Ann was assisting in supplies and providing water for when our patient needed to spit. Kevin was our camera man. It was quite the scene. And as the Lord guided our hands, I successfully hit the nerve blocks and Josh successfully extracted 3 teeth with no broken roots. It was a very awesome experience and maybe we’ll get the opportunity to do it again.