Friday June 18 Clinic Day 5

We finally made it to the end of the week! By now, we have all the kinks worked out in terms of logistics in the clinic and things are running very smoothly. We purposely scheduled less patients today knowing that we had a significant amount of clean-up ahead of us before departing at 4:30am the next day for our flight to Roatan. 

We began the day with a quick trip to the mission's organic farm as a mini get away from the clinic. Sister Marta showed us all of the different kinds of food that they grow such as pineapple plants, mango trees, cucumbers, bananas, orchids and more! They also have a special way of making fertilizer that they are trying to get patented world-wide. We saw their small corn mill that locals walk sometimes over 2 hours to get to in order to mill their corn for the week. The idea is that the farm will be able to fund the mission in the future and be the "lungs of Guaimaca" due to all of the deforesting that is currently going on in and around their city. In addition to the farm, they have built a small science lab for the students at the mission's girls' school. In the lab, they have the ONLY microscope in all of Guaimaca. Those girls are extremely lucky to be able to utilize such an amazing tool and be able to learn agricultural skills on the farm. Before heading back to the clinic, we got to hike through the farm and enjoy the outdoors for the first time this week!

 

When we returned from the farm around 8:30am, the mission staff was kind enough to cook us breakfast while we were out. Since patients had scheduled and lining up since 8am, we had to eat quickly and get into clinic. Right around 9am, the power company decided to shut off the power. Without electricity, we had no chance of running the clinic and since the mission's water supply runs on an electric pump, we also were without water. With patients already in the chairs, we had to improvise and attempt to entertain them while we waited for the power to return. There was the cutest little girl who needed an extraction and a filling. During the power outage, we talked about Hannah Montana and High School Musical and I even taught her some English. She was adorable and one of the best patients we had all week. Sister Maria phoned the electric company and asked them when the power would come back on. Eventually, around 9:45am we were back up and running, but the power surge blew out the water pump and we would be without water until we left the next day. Fortunately, there was a lot of 5-gallon drinking jugs around for us to use in the clinic and for ourselves.

With the power outage behind us, we continued with the last few patients for the week. We only had about 30 patients scheduled and many of them were follow ups from previous treatments earlier in the week. Hector, Hetal and Silpa had some overflow root canal patients that they had to finish. Hector and Anita worked on one patient's two root canals for half of Thursday and almost all of Friday morning. She is a student at the mission's school and had to leave by 1pm to catch her bus back to her small village in the mountains. Lucky for her, her front two teeth were saved from extraction!

After a long week's work, it was finally time to start packing everything up and organizing all of the instruments and supplies for the next group in September. Dr. Patterson chronicled how to assemble all of the dental units and compressors. We took pictures of how the clinic should be set up, where dirty and clean instruments are kept, how to run the autoclave and x-ray developer and sorted the instruments according to restorative, perio and prophy, and extraction. We tried to make everything as easy as possible for the September team because they will only have a half day to set up! After all was said and done and we returned to the dorms for dinner, we couldn't believe how much we were able to accomplish in 5 days. In total, we officially treated 115 patients in the clinic, fluoridated, screened and taught Good Oral Health Practice classes to 65 girls from the mission's school, and traveled to a remote village, screened, fluoridated and taught OHI to over 100 people. I think that is an extremely successful mission for our first time. I can only imagine how much better and more sophisticated our clinic in Guaimaca will be with each successive trip. I am so excited to see what the September group is going to be able to do and how many people they are going to be able to help. The people of Guaimaca, Honduras are forever grateful for everything we were able to do on this trip and cannot wait to welcome the next group that is coming.


I would like to especially thank the St. Joan of Arc Men's Group in San Ramon, CA for their unbelievable monetary, spiritual and encouraging support for our mission. Your generosity made this mission an absolute success and I cannot personally thank you all enough for what you were able to contribute.

Also, thank you to all of the dentists, companies, friends and families that contributed to our mission in one way or another. The unprecedented support that we received from you all allowed us to help the most needy people of Honduras. Our mission team is forever grateful for the life-changing experience that we had in Guaimaca and I know that many of us are eager to return on one of the upcoming trips!

Stephanie