THE M.O.M. PROJECT
MOM is a dental outreach project hosted once every two years in Jackson. Most every dentist in the state volunteers their time for either a Friday or Saturday. We completed dentistry on the poor, needy, and homeless. Most everyone we treated was unemployed and uninsured. This year it was hosted at the Clyde Muse Center in Pearl. There was a host of dentist including Oral Surgeons, Pediadontist, Periodontist, Radiologist, Endodontist, and of course General Dentist. We reported to "work" at 5a.m., and completed a 12 hour shift of doing dental work - retiring for the day at 5p.m. I'm not going to lie, it was probably the hardest dentistry I have ever done. For one, I was asked to "complete as much as possible" per patient. Which doesn't sound bad until they come to you with all four quadrants of their mouth numbed by the triage team, and 15 cavities, and radiographs that were blurry, mounds of calculus, bleeding because Oral Surgery had already gotten their hands on them, poor lighting, materials I'm not used to working with, volunteer assistants (who were not really assistants, just lay people), and a chair that had 2 positions - 180 degrees, or 90 degrees - prostrate or erect. I was exhausted. I was only able to see 5 patients the entire day. Julia saw 6. Thank God for the other dentists. I worked through lunch and finally got a break at 2:30 that afternoon - at which time all the food was gone and I ate a pack of nabs. So then I was hungry and dehydrated. By the end of the day I was refusing to do any more fillings and would only extract teeth - begging oral surgery to be nice and share. Julia and I were both so tired when we left that I'm pretty sure we were in Yazoo City on our way home before we could even talk to each other about the day. We were both in that Zombie State. No, we did not stay to help clean up, we did not help in any other way other than 58429356 fillings. My hand is still sore. I am not saying I will never do that again, but I will definitely be more prepared next time - bring my own materials, my own assistant, and buy a better light. Maybe I should go back to school and become and oral surgeon - I swear their job is so much easier. And for those of you wondering "Isn't it like Honduras?" um... NO. In Honduras we are the Oral Surgeons. We get to do the easy job of extracting all day. No drilling. No filling. No hand-pieces. Honduras is way better and I will take a month of Honduras Dentistry over that 12 hours, any day. It was HARD. Here are a few pics so you can get an idea of the process. It was neat, well organized, and a fantastic way to give back. It was just very hard work.
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| "Restorative Department" / aka - Drill and Fill |
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| Oral Surgery |
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| Radiology |
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| Radiology |
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| Pediatrics - just getting started for the day - thank the good Lord they had their own room... I dunno what we would have done had we had screaming kids on top of all the other disarray! |
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| Julia hard at work |
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| Clinic at full capacity - General Dentist lined up Back - to - Back ... |
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| Getting set up to start the day |
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