The Vow Of A Soft-Hearted Aspiring Dentist

~ Wednesday 13th August

Ah, the exciting world of oral cysts hey. Here's hoping you're not already put off and clicking the little x in the top right corner of your screen. The post isn't as gross as the sentence suggests. I promise. Stay with me - please?

Although yes, it seems like I'm seeing cysts and extractions in equal proportions. For that reason I suppose, David and I were enlightened by Dr Grace of the different types of cysts that can occur in the oral cavity and we learnt about their clinical features, how they're developed, and the approaches that can be taken in treating them. I would happily go into lengthy detail for each one, but I'm at the risk of assuming that you'll get as excited as aspiring dentists would and in turn just end up boring you to death. Before that little oral biology class though, we were waiting quite a while for Dr Grace to turn up (we were early as usual) so David was teaching me, aided with diagrams, about the geography of America and its states which was pretty interesting (and surprising going by my - albeit very little - existing knowledge).

We saw much of the same; draining of abscesses, the removal of decayed teeth and minor surgeries to excise abnormal tissue. Actually, one case bothered me. We had a four year old boy who came in with a swollen face because he had dental caries right across his mouth so he needed his four anterior teeth extracting. Obviously it requires the injection of local anaesthetic but generally, and I don't blame them, the kids go hysterical when they see the needle. I mean, I'm 20 and I would do the same (or worse). But the dentists have little, if any sympathy. And to some extent, I get that. It's Africa, and with limited resources and patients being unable to pay for dental treatment, their jobs can be frustrating to say the least, but these are kids. 

When they scream and squirm and kick in the dental chair because they don't want an injection, they get four to five members of staff literally pinning the child to the chair and forcing the injection through their clenched teeth and the screaming that follows is unreal. It is outright horrible to watch and hear.

I just wish they would show a little bit of mercy and compassion. Dentists are hated enough as it is so if you're going to be one, be a damn good one.

That's my vow by the way. If I do succeed in my ambition to become one, I'm going to be the loveliest dentist out there. You heard it here first.

We later found out that the little boy had rampant caries which is very severe decay on multiple surfaces of many teeth due to extensive drug use; his mother was regularly taking drugs during her pregnancy and the substances travelled across the placenta to the embryo, damaging the teeth of the foetus. I shouldn't judge, but my God I felt a rush of anger towards the woman who was watching her child scream in agony as his front four teeth were pulled out with close to zero sympathy.

What can I even say? It's the sad sad state of an impoverished world and it's one of millions of cases out there, and not a damned thing can be done about it. On that note, that little girl I told you about? The one whose life we tried to save by funding the flight to save her life. Yeah, they didn't use the money on her for reasons unbeknown to me. All I know is that it's beyond ridiculous and frustrating and heartbreaking. They instead used it on another girl who was in dire need of treatment but I have no idea what's going to happen the 6-year old it was meant for.

On that happy note, we broke off for lunch so a group of us went to this little cafe near the house and then we wandered around town for a while. There's this lady in Masai Market who stitches African pants, tailor-made to fit you, so I went and ordered a pair of those. And then back at the house after dinner, we had another Global Health Tutorial with Dr Rama of the out-patients department (OPD) and he taught us about malaria. Credit to him, he's such a brilliant doctor. The science behind malaria has never been so engaging.