May 31, 2010: Supplies Supplies Supplies!!!

Hello! My name is Stephanie Cappiello and I am a first year dental student at UCLA School of Dentistry. Since the summer of 2008, I have had the dream of establishing a fully functional dental clinic at the Fall River Mission in Guiamaca, Honduras. When my family and I traveled to the medical clinic two years ago, I met a countless number of people who could not afford even a toothbrush, never mind regular dental visits. I was introduced to a young 13 year old girl who had already had all of her teeth extracted. She could barely eat solid food and her mother had to grind up all of her meals in order for her to get the proper nutrients. Imagine, she will never be able to bite into an apple, chew a piece of meat properly or smile from ear to ear without being reminded of her missing teeth. It is people like this young girl who inspired me to work so hard these past six months to collect all of the supplies, motivate the dentists and dental students, and organize the mission trip of a lifetime.

Over the past six months we have collected a ridiculous amount of supplies for the trip. Since we are, for the most part, building a fully functional 4-chair dental clinic from the ground up, we need to bring EVERYTHING! We are bringing an autoclave, an air compressor to run the handpieces, an automatic X-Ray film developer, a suction unit, over 1000 toothbrushes and 1000 toothpastes, thousands of yards of floss, 12 highspeed handpieces, and much much more. To be exact, we have over 650 pounds of supplies that we will be checking in suitcases and boxes next Friday night at LAX.

On Memorial Day evening, our group spent over four hours packaging, organizing, inventorying, and prioritizing everything that has been sitting in my apartment for weeks! We finally finished and now my porch is completely packed with fourteen 50 pound suitcases, while my trunk has the other three 50 pound boxes all awaiting the magical time of 1:25am June 12, 2010.



Thank you so much to all of the companies that donated supplies and money: Medical Protective, Proctor & Gamble's Oral-B and Crest, Johnson & Johnson's Listerine and REACH, Brassler, Ultradent, Discus Dental, Garrison Dental Supplies, and Patterson Dental. Also, thank you so much to all of the dentists that donated supplies and family and friends that donated money to help us purchase the items we were not able to get donated! Without all of your support, this mission would not have been possible.

THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR SUPPORTERS!!!

NEXT POST: June 12th from LAX :)