Cuidad Constitucion Campaign: Medical Clinic

Well, our second campaign of the year is already underway. We just got back from a week of clinic at Constitucion. I was really touched by the overwhelming kindness and generousity shown to our team in this town. It was such a blessing!! Arriving early Sunday morning, still groggy and sore from an overnight 8hr. truck ride, we were greeted with open arms from the Adventist church members. We were quickly taken to one lady’s house for breakfast, which was absolutely delicious, then to the church for another breakfast provided by the church. The whole week I was completely taken aback by how warm and inviting everyone was, it was really amazing!! They were the sweetest people ever, always so concerned with caring for our every need and making sure we had plenty of food! Wowzers! Ok, so the food was pretty much amazing!! Lots of food too! I definitely got my fill of yuca! Every meal had either platano or yuca with it. Good thing I like them!!

So this town is about 7hrs by truck. It is only accessible by 4-wheel drive and traveling on the road at night could be quite dangerous. Around 12:30am Saturday night-early Sunday morning, 11 of us all piled into two pick-up trucks with all our stuff and medical supplies for the clinic. Tara, Kaitlin, and I crammed into the extended cab of a pick up truck, along with two Bible workers and the hired driver. For the next few hours, we kinda slept, kinda watched the road, kinda slept a little more.

This was the most layed back clinic ever. No rush or line of people at 6 o’clock in the morning, most didn’t start arriving until 9 or so. Dental was much busier this clinic, which is great because it gave Brent and me lots more practice. Thankfully, Manuel was there to handle the hard cases and help teach David about extracting teeth. Each day we pulled between 50-70 teeth. I’ll highlight some of our more memorable patients:
- 9yr-old boy came in to have his teeth pulled, except he didn’t didn’t want to. He was pretty much forced by his mother. He cried, kicked and screamed the whole time. Manuel, who has seen thousands of patients, said this was his hardest patient ever! I felt so bad for the kid, but it was really hard explaining to the poor boy that he wouldn’t be in so much pain anymore if we were just able to get a couple of the teeth out. With me holding the boy’s hands down, Manuel was able to inject some anesthesia into the kid’s mouth. Between the kicking and screaming (despite being numb), Manuel was able to expertly extract the boy’s tooth. By this time, 45 minutes had passed and there was no way to get the second tooth out, so that was it for the day. The boy and his mother came back on Friday and we tried to get the other tooth out, but we didn’t get too far. Spent 30 minutes trying to calm the poor boy down, but he was just too much to handle a second time.
- I had a young patient who came in with a tooth quite far into the hard palate. I had never seen something like that before, but with God’s help and guidance, it turned out to be quite easy to get out and the boy felt much better afterwards. I saved the tooth! J
- I worked on a patient’s tooth for about an hour, trying to get the roots out. I finally asked Dr. Mathews to come help (Manuel was gone for the afternnon). He spent a good amount of time on it as well. I felt bad for the girl. I’m pretty sure her jaw was quite sore for a while after that experience, but thankfully we got it out and she was ok!!

So, we have this cute little monkey, Frankie, as our pet. However the same affection for him is not shared by all of our team members. Case in point: On Wednesday of clinic, about mid-morning Kailtin noticed that the monkey was unusually tired, slow reaction time, and loss of grib strengh, among other things. She freaks out, knowing that some of our beloved team members (mostly Manuel and Dr. Mathews) have a strong dislike for the little thing, she asks around, trying to figure out if anyone had done anything to the monkey. Of course, it didn’t really help the situation knowing that the monkey had been tethered to a table leg in the pharmacy area, and the possibility of him finding a random pill or liquid on the ground could be pretty good, considering the little creature loves to eat almost everything (at least it seems like it).
Well, as time passes it quickly becomes apparant that the monkey is acting quite drunk and cannot for the life of him walk, much less in a straight line! It’s really funny, though sad/scary not knoing exactly why he is suddenly acting this way. Kaitlin is still probing Manuel and Dr. Mathews trying to find out if either one of them did it, but of course they’re not going to admit anything (at least not right away). With pressue building against the guild-ridden face of Dr. Mathews (Manuel had been busy with dental the whole morning so he couldn’t have done anything), the pieces to the mystery puzzle of what happened to Frankie slowly are put together.

Despite Dr. Mathews proclaiming his innocence, he is in deed quite guilty. Somehow, in the course of the morning, he found the time to sneak over to pharmacy, pop a Diazepam (Valium) pill from the container and try to feed it to the monkey. The monkey for some reason wasn’t too excited about eating the pill straight so…the doctor calculates the “correct” dosage a monkey should receive of the stuff, dilutes it in Amoxicilian/water solution, puts it into a little water bottle cap and gives it to the monkey. Of course, being that this monkey is willing to try anything and with his love for sweet things, quickly downs the whole solution! Somehow, Dr. Mathews is able to do this whole operation without anyone seeing him. Crazy!
So for the next 36hrs. The monkey came in and out of conscienceness, sleeping lots and not being able to do anything else. Though whenever a platano was shoved in his mouth, he would suddenly come alive and eat like mad! Finally after acting drunk and just completely out of it for over a day, the monkey finally came out of his hazy state, much to the relief of everyone, including doctor!!