Guatemala Aug 1-8

This was my last trip with my internship, and I returned to the same malnutrition in San Juan, Guatemala that I worked at in May. I was excited to go back and see some of the children that I had grown to know at the beginning of the summer. It ended up, however, that the four children whom I had gotten to know the most, were healthy enough to return home to their families. Even though I was not able to tell them goodbye, I was very happy to know they were with their families again. A blog from the trip can be found at http://fbchinternationalchildcare.blogspot.com/. Videos from the trip can be seen at http://vimeo.com/6076492 - this site includes one serious video of our experience as well as one "untold story" video.

This trip to Guatemala was a very different experience than my last one since it was primarily for medical clinics. Although I have no interest in medicine, the dental clinic needed a volunteer, so I spent the week as a dental assistant. The first day I was very queasy after seeing all of the blood from the teeth extractions, but I came to really enjoy working with the dental team throughout the week. We pulled over 150 teeth and cleaned about 50 children’s teeth (as well as teaching their mothers proper dental care). It was difficult to hold down screaming kids who had never been to a dentist before and needed several infected teeth pulled. However, I knew our work was for a better good.

Examining a patient's teeth

Working in a dental clinic was definitely out of my comfort zone, but I am so thankful for the experience. Coming to Guatemala, I did not know the capacity to which I would be serving. However, I went in being open to wherever help was needed – little did I know, I would be seeing the most blood out of anyone on the medical clinic team! However, as I came to know the patients’ stories, the blood did not bother me because I knew we were helping to prevent or relieve serious infections, tooth decay, and pain. It was very eye-opening to work with mothers who were younger than me and brought three children to the clinic. Also, many mothers did know how to brush their children’s teeth, making me appreciate my frequent dental trips growing up. For two particular four-year-olds, we had to pull seven teeth out of each because their mouths were so infected. It was extremely difficult to hold the children down as they screamed and did not understand why we were causing them pain. We tried to teach their mothers not to put their babies to bed with bottles and to brush their children’s teeth every night. At points it was overwhelming, knowing all of the teeth we couldn’t clean and how limited our capabilities were in a make-shift dental clinic. However, helping any number of mothers learn dental care was well worth it.