One of the best perks about working in the galley (aside from the constant supply of free food) is our funky schedule: since we get weekdays off on a regular basis, we can sign up for things that happen during the workday. I’ve had the last two days off, so this past Wednesday I went out with the dental team to visit the clinic off ship, and on Thursday morning, I got to observe some crazy surgeries.
Like I said, the dental clinic is located off the ship, about 20 minutes away. The advance team (the team that comes into the country before the ship arrives) found a really nice, vacant building for the dental team to use. I was so pleasantly surprised to see how modern the dental clinic was: obviously it's no match for a dental office back home, but they had a long table of sterilized instruments, shelves stock full of dental supplies, suction machines, dental chairs, cavitrons! (which I was really surprised about), and of course, generators to power everything. The clinic is even air conditioned (Hallelujah to that).
From what I gathered, the procedures they do in the clinic are mainly limited to extractions and fillings; for obvious reasons, they're not going to be placing implants or bridges anytime soon. The patients are wonderful here though. Someone told me that there are only 27 dentists in the entire country of Togo, so most of the patients have never been to a dentist before in their lives. They're so grateful and extraordinarily patient, and they never complain about anything; they put the patients at home to shame who squeal every time the suction doesn't immediately pick up their excess saliva.
You can't really tell in these pictures (we're only allowed to take wide-shot photos to protect patient confidentiality), but these surgeries were incredible to watch. The first picture is a cleft lip patient-- a little boy. OMFS is one of the specialties of dentistry, so being able to see this surgery firsthand was an amazing opportunity for me. I need to not go woozy though-- I found myself surprisingly queasy (I fancy myself having an iron stomach, but that may just be wishful thinking at this point). So weird to see the surgeon just stitch up a lip from two separate pieces and to think of how much it will affect this little boy's life. And the second picture is of a tumor removal from the face of a teenage girl, not that different in age to myself. This tumor was so large that it literally looked like she had another head. I was so incredibly sad looking at her; it must've robbed her of her entire childhood. But if a fixed cleft lip changes a life, imagine what this surgery will do for her.
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