Ema goes to the dentist

We took Emmanuel to see the dentist today. Dr. Jay Maxfield is a retired American dentist who comes to Nigeria a couple of times each year to work in the dental clinic at Evangel. The way things work, we had to go to the clinic to see him before we could even make an appointment, so we went this morning.

Jay was busy with a patient when we arrived, but one way Nigerian culture differs greatly from American culture is in the concept of privacy, including in medical situations. It’s quite normal for staff and even other patients to go in and out of exam rooms while the doctor is seeing a patient. If you really want to be undisturbed, you have to lock the door.

So when we arrived, Jay called us in to see what we wanted. An older, traditionally dressed Nigerian woman was in the chair with Jay bent over her, working. For about 15 minutes we talked with Jay about Emmanuel, about the clinic, who is being trained, and so on. Jay pointed out that there was a new dental chair but no working light, so he was glad to have a good headlamp, an advantage the regular clinic dentist did not have. Meanwhile he was struggling to remove a difficult, broken tooth from the woman’s mouth as she grimaced silently. Ema was well behaved, just standing and watching.

When the broken tooth was finally out and it was our turn, Jay wanted to actually see Ema’s mouth to get an idea of what kind of work would be needed. To accomplish this, I sat in the chair myself and wrapped my legs around Ema’s, grabbed his arms tightly, and hung on for dear life, hoping that the struggling, screaming boy would not twist me right off the chair. Jay finally did get a good enough peek and Ema didn’t destroy the dental mirror, so the exam was a success.
It turns out that Ema has one abscessed tooth that could be causing him pain. You would never know it, but it could be part of why he doesn’t like having his teeth brushed. Maybe. But I think he’s going to keep screaming even after his tooth is fixed. Anyway, the plan is to use ketamine (a safe anesthetic commonly used here for children) in the clinic rather than the operating room, if we can, and work on Ema sometime next week.

After all that, we made a quick visit to the pediatric ward and small clinic, where I had not been for the past four years, just to see how things are as I am thinking about how to do some medical work again. I could actually face the ward & clinic without cringing, so I’ve made some progress. However, the situation with the whole hospital including pediatrics is not very encouraging, as it has deteriorated in some ways over the past few years and is now almost in crisis according to some. Would I work there again? I don’t know yet.