Friendships Begin to Form

Part of the experience in any new out of country adventure is meeting the rest of the team members that will be traveling with you.  Into my life e-mails begin to flow from the nice sounding lady who books all the travel arrangements for Project Helping Hands including our Bolivian mission.  While I bragged to her about some of my past exploits she informs me that her young son has bravado too.  Elizabeth shares his powerful letter with me.  After reading the heartfelt letter written home to his mom it in fact helped jolt me back into realizing I needed to get back to writing on my blog again...
Elizabeth writes.  This is Spencer’s first email from Uganda – January 2011.  Enjoy...

This is Spencer.  This picture makes him look
taller and more handsome then in real life.

Sorry, I've been bad about communicating.

So, today... I got to do a lot more than I honestly wanted to ever do on this trip. Gideon (the only African on the team, a giant Kenyan dentist who I assist) is somehow very confident in my abilities already (Dental school here is three years long, right after high school). I follow what he tells me and I have developed a pretty neat and sterile system in which to work. I was happy reloading syringes and disposing of sharps while working the sterilizer and fire. We had about forty patients waiting just for dental when we arrived at 8:30. One woman was an albino, who was about 60 or so. She was very interesting-looking, with all the African features minus the pigment. Her blood pressure ended up being about 230/140 so we couldn't remove any of her teeth because the local anesthetic (locaine) contains adrenaline. Also, it affects the turgidity of the womb in pregnant women. blah blah. About the tenth person in,

My mentor Dentist Gideon

Gideon motions for me to come over and says, "Inject him." I immediately started shaking from all the adrenaline in my blood stream. As to not absolutely freak out the patient, I tried to stay calm and make fluid motions, but it was very difficult as I grabbed the syringe, not feeling confident at all. Gideon turned around to help another patient and left me to inject without any supervision... for the first time in my life. SHIT. uh... okay, I remembered what he said about the depth of the needle, location, volume, etc. Time to do it. I'll transcribe a little of what I wrote from my journal here: "He was a guy about 20 years old, well-dressed, but had a quite unsalvageable upper molar. I grabbed a syringe and adrenaline surged through my limbs. "What the Hell am I about to do to this man?" The needle trembled and dripped locaine, also sharing my adrenaline rush. All I could think was 1/3rd length of the needle on the outside with 2/3rds the volume (1.8 mL), and the tip into the inner with the remainder. I was quaking uncontrollably. The patient cocked back his head in the old red and gold overstuffed chair we have been using for extractions (probably overstuffed with the usual tropical treasure trove of bugs). It was difficult to pull back his lips enough the tooth was so far back in his mouth (the last). I should have worn a second glove. I stuck it in. The resistance from the syringe was surprisingly intense, so the shaking became much more apparent. The inside of the gums. Much harder to shove liquid into that type of tissue so close to the tooth. He was a good sport, as I Robot-ed over to the sharps container and faintly apologized a couple times. Ten minutes later, Gideon says, "Now you put your strength to the test." OH. My nerves glowed with epinephrine and my pores burped out everything good in the world, including a sweat that when mixed with 98.61% DEET stung like Hell. Choosing the tool. I picked right. I wish I hadn't, seeing as how it only convinced Gideon further I was to be trusted with another humans mandible. Crooked forceps in my grip. I dug into the gums around his green and black enamel and clenched so hard my hand cramped. His gums turned white with the pressure, then flowed red. Oh, boy. Then began about the longest thirty seconds of my life. Gideon was there at least. Left, right. Left, right. Holding the man's head became a two-man job. This was the same kind of tooth that blew up yesterday, so I was very careful not to make a bomb out of his upper row. Finally, it begins to wiggle. My knuckles were white beneath my neoprene gloves, I'm certain. The left, right begins to prove very effective and eventually a noise both completely terrifying but oddly relieving, because this experience was to pass. It raises slightly above the level of the other calculated teeth. Circles. Circles! They work, too! Another bitter-sweet sound. If I were adventurous with my onomatopoeia I would name this sound "Sklake" with about seventeen A's. Violently, the tooth flies into space. I look. It's still attached to the forceps. I dump the tooth in the dirt bucket and instruct the man to bite down on some gauze. He walked out. I wanted to fall on my face and bring Gideon down with me. I pulled eight teeth total today and anesthetized more."

Spencer's Dental station

I walked back from the clinic with Gideon today. We are becoming good friends. I'm glad I have been partnered with the only African on the team. He is definitely one of my favorite people I have ever met. We shared a sugar cane (which looks like six feet of Chinese bamboo) on the way back and he laughed as I struggled to peel the bark with my teeth. The people on the streets shout "Muzungu!" which means Gringo roughly. They treat the whites like celebs though. Gideon walked on and looked exactly like a Giant Panda. I remembered halfway through with my sugar water encased in fiber that I was told not to eat ANY street food, so oops.



The Sudanese election is tomorrow, so things might get a little hairy.  I'm told things should be fine, but it's going to be historic nonetheless. One bad thing I learned today was that the security with AK-47's outside of the clinic... don't actually have them loaded, so if shit gets hot, they're probably gonna hop on the back of a Bota Bota (motorcycle cab).

I hope you and Dad are okay by yourselves in the house with no kiddies. I love you and miss you both so much. Know that I am finding myself here and this trip has been the best thing to ever happen to me, no matter what.

Thanks Spence for your words.  It will be interesting to see what awaits our own Project Helping Hands team in the Bolivian Highlands...