Saturday, March 5, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
HEY GIRL LEMME PULL YO TEETH
So i have talked on and off with some of you about my new dental clinic placement, where I have been working about 3 weeks... it is awesome. There honestly could be no better placement for me, the time has flown by and I have loved it. My first day went like this:
8:00 AM - Show up and meet the staff, consisting of Dr. Yvan (the head dentist) and five dental students who are one semester shy of graduation. Dr. Yvan was a former professor at the dental school, so he loves to teach and explain everything to me. Uhhhh ship it
8:30 AM - Start to chat/get to know the dental students as I shadow/watch them work on patients. 3 pretty Peruvian girls (triple ship) and 2 peruvian guys who love to joke/mess around/generally act inappropriately. Ummmmm this is my favorite environment, I CAN SHINE HERE
Carlos y Dani, the aforementioned jokesters, finishing up some paper work
8:30 to 10:30 AM - Shadow the students as they drill and fill cavities and pull teeth. The clinic is in a lower income part of cuzco, so everyone who comes in pays with Seguro, the Peruvian version of social security. It costs $2 to pull a tooth, uhhh what? A tube of lidocaine is 33 cents down here, uhhhh what? Regardless of how cheap that is, many people still can't afford it, so pretty much 99% of fillings are done WITHOUT NUMBING MEDICINE, uhhh what? The people just sit there like champs, we drill until we get pretty close/touching the pulp and they just deal with the pain. It is insane. Little girls, teenagers, old men, old women, you name it. No numbing, just sit em down and drill. LOCO
Jacquelli and Miriam bringing the pain
The lovely extraction chair, straight out of a 1970's horror movie
The "filling" chair is a little more high tech. J wanted me to delete this picture since she "looked ugly" because her brow was furrowed, confirming the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE, in any country or culture, to take a picture of a female that she actually likes
Seguro covers extractions but not root canals, so if the infection is really deep, its yank time. They get one tube of lidocaine for that, so we numb them up and pull out the bad guy. It is so funny down here, there is no pampering whatsoever. We numb it, pull it, give them the tooth in some bloody gauze (everyone wants to keep their teeth), stuff some more gauze in the new hole they have in their gums, give them a day or two worth of pain pills, have them sign some forms, and theyre gone within 2 minutes of us getting the tooth out. Let the good times roll, have a great day homie.
OPEN WIDEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
They have offered to let me drill/numb/pull but I have kindly refused as U.S. dental schools look down on untrained people performing irreversible procedures (makes sense). So my role is strictly observational to learn, and then other small things like mixing compounds/grabbing tools/holding things/doing anything they need help with to speed up the process. You could call me a semi-worthless peruvian dental assistant I guess???
10:30 to 11:00 AM - So after we were finished with all our patients on the first day, the girls go out and buy some fresh avocados, tomatoes, and onions and make this huge bowl of fresh guacamole. We all sit around and eat guacamole on bread (typical snack here) and drink coffee and talk about life. Are you kidding me? I am just thinking uhhhhhhhh this is awesome, how could this get any better?
Empanadas have become a daily snack favorite, dos con pollo por favorrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I kid you not Dr. Yvan then looks at me and asks if I liked to play cards. I start to laugh and say of course, and he then informs me that they like to gamble with a bit of money when they are playing, would that be okay with me? HAHAHAHAH YES THIS IS AWESOME
11:00 to Noon - Gamble with my new friends playing this peruvian card game that I constantly get hustled at. I am down probably the equivalent of a few bucks, playing for only ~25 cents at a time, OWNED. I have won the last few days though and am making a comeback I think
They also all only speak spanish, so I still get great practice. They love when I teach them english words and are all super interested about life in the US, so I am gonna bring in my computer one of these days and show them a bunch of pictures of NC/Cali/UNC/My travels etc.
It was super funny the other day, we were listening to this english song on the radio and they were all curious about what it meant. Its some song thats popular down here where a guy catches his girl cheating on him, and the song is just filled with F bombs and cursing and calling his girl a whore and crazy stuff like that hahaha. So they are like "nick what does this mean? Sing this to us in english" and I was just cracking up saying "well friends he called his girlfriend a dirty girl... he is very mad... she likes many boys..." hahaa
So work is great, put in a lot of shadowing hours which will be good for dental school apps, and also learning a ton in general about the peruvian/3rd world dental system
Just another day at the office
I have done a ton of things since the last update too, like go to lake titicaca, first soccer game, random travels, and a bunch of stuff in cuzco, but I am the worst and didnt put it on here. Maybe one day!
Lima on monday to meet up with friends, then northward for a week before returning to cuzco on the 15th or so. Will feel weird to be joining the "backpacker" circuit for a week like I usually do and staying in hostels and stuff, haha!
Love,
N
8:00 AM - Show up and meet the staff, consisting of Dr. Yvan (the head dentist) and five dental students who are one semester shy of graduation. Dr. Yvan was a former professor at the dental school, so he loves to teach and explain everything to me. Uhhhh ship it
8:30 AM - Start to chat/get to know the dental students as I shadow/watch them work on patients. 3 pretty Peruvian girls (triple ship) and 2 peruvian guys who love to joke/mess around/generally act inappropriately. Ummmmm this is my favorite environment, I CAN SHINE HERE
Carlos y Dani, the aforementioned jokesters, finishing up some paper work
8:30 to 10:30 AM - Shadow the students as they drill and fill cavities and pull teeth. The clinic is in a lower income part of cuzco, so everyone who comes in pays with Seguro, the Peruvian version of social security. It costs $2 to pull a tooth, uhhh what? A tube of lidocaine is 33 cents down here, uhhhh what? Regardless of how cheap that is, many people still can't afford it, so pretty much 99% of fillings are done WITHOUT NUMBING MEDICINE, uhhh what? The people just sit there like champs, we drill until we get pretty close/touching the pulp and they just deal with the pain. It is insane. Little girls, teenagers, old men, old women, you name it. No numbing, just sit em down and drill. LOCO
Jacquelli and Miriam bringing the pain
The lovely extraction chair, straight out of a 1970's horror movie
The "filling" chair is a little more high tech. J wanted me to delete this picture since she "looked ugly" because her brow was furrowed, confirming the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE, in any country or culture, to take a picture of a female that she actually likes
Seguro covers extractions but not root canals, so if the infection is really deep, its yank time. They get one tube of lidocaine for that, so we numb them up and pull out the bad guy. It is so funny down here, there is no pampering whatsoever. We numb it, pull it, give them the tooth in some bloody gauze (everyone wants to keep their teeth), stuff some more gauze in the new hole they have in their gums, give them a day or two worth of pain pills, have them sign some forms, and theyre gone within 2 minutes of us getting the tooth out. Let the good times roll, have a great day homie.
OPEN WIDEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
They have offered to let me drill/numb/pull but I have kindly refused as U.S. dental schools look down on untrained people performing irreversible procedures (makes sense). So my role is strictly observational to learn, and then other small things like mixing compounds/grabbing tools/holding things/doing anything they need help with to speed up the process. You could call me a semi-worthless peruvian dental assistant I guess???
10:30 to 11:00 AM - So after we were finished with all our patients on the first day, the girls go out and buy some fresh avocados, tomatoes, and onions and make this huge bowl of fresh guacamole. We all sit around and eat guacamole on bread (typical snack here) and drink coffee and talk about life. Are you kidding me? I am just thinking uhhhhhhhh this is awesome, how could this get any better?
Empanadas have become a daily snack favorite, dos con pollo por favorrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I kid you not Dr. Yvan then looks at me and asks if I liked to play cards. I start to laugh and say of course, and he then informs me that they like to gamble with a bit of money when they are playing, would that be okay with me? HAHAHAHAH YES THIS IS AWESOME
11:00 to Noon - Gamble with my new friends playing this peruvian card game that I constantly get hustled at. I am down probably the equivalent of a few bucks, playing for only ~25 cents at a time, OWNED. I have won the last few days though and am making a comeback I think
They also all only speak spanish, so I still get great practice. They love when I teach them english words and are all super interested about life in the US, so I am gonna bring in my computer one of these days and show them a bunch of pictures of NC/Cali/UNC/My travels etc.
It was super funny the other day, we were listening to this english song on the radio and they were all curious about what it meant. Its some song thats popular down here where a guy catches his girl cheating on him, and the song is just filled with F bombs and cursing and calling his girl a whore and crazy stuff like that hahaha. So they are like "nick what does this mean? Sing this to us in english" and I was just cracking up saying "well friends he called his girlfriend a dirty girl... he is very mad... she likes many boys..." hahaa
So work is great, put in a lot of shadowing hours which will be good for dental school apps, and also learning a ton in general about the peruvian/3rd world dental system
Just another day at the office
I have done a ton of things since the last update too, like go to lake titicaca, first soccer game, random travels, and a bunch of stuff in cuzco, but I am the worst and didnt put it on here. Maybe one day!
Lima on monday to meet up with friends, then northward for a week before returning to cuzco on the 15th or so. Will feel weird to be joining the "backpacker" circuit for a week like I usually do and staying in hostels and stuff, haha!
Love,
N
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