Clinic

We were off to a bumpy start as far as clinic went. When we arrived we had no instruments; no forceps, elevators, or restoration material, we didn't even have lidocaine (freezing). We tried to see some patients, but we could only perform an exam and tell them to come back when we got our supplies and anaesthetic in. By Saturday we had all of our shipments and were able to start properly seeing patients. Let the 12 hour + shifts begin!

Our little op

Health Centre and Dental Waiting Room

We see a lot of deep decay and perform a lot of extractions and fillings. We have patients as young as 17 months old coming in with decay so far gone that we have no choice but to remove the teeth that are causing abscesses. We sometimes take newly erupted adult teeth (6 year molars) out of 7 year old children. Obviously we see  lot of tears in the day. This makes some people uncomfortable, but the patients are just scared and should be allowed to cry. As Julia said "I don't mean to be rude, but this is some scary shit!". We are fortunate enough down South to have sedation, here there is nothing. There are waiting list of young patients to be flown to Iqaluit or Ottawa to have sedation, but it can take up to two years to be seen. By that time it is really too late, people can only suffer from a tooth ache for so long. In a perfect world there would be no tooth aches, especially for children.