What you CAN do

Today we headed to the clinic. As we rolled up to an abandoned school there were already tons of families lined up to see us. We quickly hustled our supplies through the crowd and set up our two clinics; dental and medical. I lead the dental clinic and quickly assessed our resources. We had 5 or 6 old rusty tables and some broken stools. We organized the tables in rows and set a chair at each end. I assigned 5 people to be PA’s and 3 to be scribes. An awesome Spanish speaker demonstrated how to brush teeth to 5 kids at a time. He was so interactive with the kids and their smiles reflected their excitement. Then we hustled them over to the tables and hosted them up and laid them down. The kids were SO cooperative and grateful for our help. I can’t imagine how scary it was to lay their head in a strangers lap with minimal Spanish instruction. Still, they did as they were told and got the varnish applied to their teeth. We saw a lot of enamel defects and a lot of tooth fractures in the kids. Clearly their dental health was not a priority and that made total sense with their circumstances. Although it seems like a minor intervention, preventing tooth decay is actually a step to prevent infection throughout the whole body. Infection spreads no matter where it starts, so a simple addition of teeth brushing in their daily lives could improve their overall health. After we utilized all our supplies we had to turn the rest of the kids away. It broke my heart to tell the children we couldn’t help them. I wanted to treat each and every one of them so desperately. A big lesson for me was to understand you can only do so much to help in this life. I did my best to treat 150 kids today and, although I couldn’t help them all, it is better than doing nothing. This morning a few of us attended a meditation session with our professor. She told us to root our lives in love and not fear and not to let negativity control our emotions and actions. After all, YOU are in charge of YOU. As a health care provider these principles are huge and I related to them deeply. I know I need to focus on the way I react to stressful situations and these rules may help me do that. She reminded us to focus on what we can do instead of what we can’t... and today I choose to do that.