25Oct 3rd clinic day—Battambang Orphanage

 

Another busy, busy day.  A little shorter though, 6 hours, not 7 and we stopped 15 minutes for lunch.  Tough,tough teeth though.  Lots of them, lots of infections, broken, bombed out, rock solid teeth.  Sorry, getting too graphic here.    One case:  5 year old comes in with almost all of his teeth decayed.  Not unusual, but the upper front teeth, although they were baby teeth had infection tracks.  No tough decision here, they have to come out; 5 of them.  Oh, and on the lower left, two more baby teeth, infected.  So a total of seven teeth needed to be  extracted.  And, he isn’t too happy to see us.  See the pictures below

                    

Before and after pictures. This is our setup for multiple anterior extractions.  Lay them down and hold ‘em.  Two more holders for the other side, and an RN, Timmi, from Australia, who knows how to hold a child’s head so it doesn’t move and we are ready to go.  Notice, we already gave him his tooth brush!   We go quickly, it is over before he knows it.  He actually was a really good, cooperative patient.  Someday he will thank me!

Food note:  Half the fun (challenge?) is the food in Asia.  Interesting here in Cambodia, as we travel from province, to province, the food varies widely.  Not only the food, but also how it is served and how we eat it.  Below is the typical breakfast in Battambang.  Rice porridge with a variety of ingredients.  You have to be a little selective when you dish out your portion.  We don’t find the chicken feet as tasty as others.  Still eating carefully, you have to negotiate the chicken claws that have cooked off the feet!  Also, frequently bread, and then eggs.  Even the eggs have ingredients you have to be careful of.  In Asian, it is perfectly acceptable to spit out or remove un-chewable/swallowable food.  Everyone has a pile of “parts” next to their plate.  Are you vegetarians squirming yet?

Finally, our hosts stopped on the side of the road to get some sugar cane drink.  They didn’t even ask if we wanted some since it is ice and sugar cane juice, and they and we know we don’t eat the local ice.  The interesting sight was the gal who was vending the drink.  She was dressed like a winter day in Montana!  Coat, gloves, wool hat.  Yes, the weather remained unchanged since we got here.  Temperature and humidity in the high 80’s lower 90’s.  And, she is smiling!