I want to share an excerpt from a letter I received from one of our valued employees, Carol Jent.  Carol has worked for Ultradent for 12 years.  She just returned from a humanitarian mission to China.  I share this with you because it exemplifies the type of experience I think we as dentists need at least once in our careers.

“Dr. Fischer, I arrived back in the United States yesterday… a changed person but I think a better person. My trip to China was some of the hardest but most rewarding work I have ever done. I walked around for 5 days with a lump in my throat fighting back the tears - tears of compassion and joy. There was so much poverty and need but so much humility, pride (the good kind) and love. These people pull at your heart strings something fierce - the people that walk or come by a rickshaw-type bike many, many miles in hope of getting help and seeing the American dentists; the desperate parents just begging you to help their child; the elderly who have terrible abscesses and gum disease begging to get out of pain; the orphans that are scared to death and have never seen a Westerner.  The little cleft palate babies are particularly rough.

To share a small part of a huge experience… there was a "grandma and grandpa" that brought their 2 month-old severely cleft grandchild to the clinic every day in hope the doctor could help the poor little girl’s deformed face/mouth.  She needed help so she could breathe and eat better. We couldn't do anything at the time (at this particular clinic, anyway) because the baby was so young. The grandparents cried (I cried). The grandparents took the baby in when the mom abandoned it for being a "freak". They love that baby so much. When they left the building (or anytime they were out in public) they had to cover the little girl's face to keep others from taunting them. We promised the family we would be back next year to help the baby.  The upside?  We were able to help seven others with cleft deformities.

That is one of the sad stories but we have many happy ones too. Like the many times we gave orphans an OH kit (brush. paste, floss, instruction sheet in Chinese) and a toy.  They were so excited! I swear, you'd think we had just handed them the crown jewels. One 15 year-old boy had a Class IV that abscessed a long time ago which had decayed up into the canal.  We decided to take heroic measures.  I walked Dr. Woolsey through the AET system and we managed to clean and seal it the best we could.  We begged the orphanage to let him come back the next day to restore it. Finally, we bribed the orphanage teacher/driver with 2 toothbrushes and toothpaste so he brought the boy back the following day.  We placed a post, used Amelogen Plus with Vit-L IrB and it looked great!  The kid didn't understand what we were doing the entire time until I handed him a mirror. His eyes popped out of his head and if he said "sank you" once, he said it a million times!

Needless to say the oral hygiene in this region was non-existent. Young children with black stain and tartar like you might see in the US on a 40+ year old who had never seen a dentist... or worse. Amazing.  Once it was removed, the tissue looked like hamburger. We did give out OH kits with pictures and instruction written in Chinese. Sometimes you can cheat yourself out of this experience and ask yourself “why bother.”  But I would tell myself, even if this is the only time many of these patients EVER have their teeth cleaned or restored, this one time may give them an extra year or two of having teeth and a better quality of life.  True, they won’t necessarily know it was because of this care they received but I will.

The dentists that were part of our group were an amazing collection of humanitarian hearts!  All in all, we worked long days and saw well over 500 patients the week we were there. You may be hearing many, many thanks from them for the supplies Ultradent donated.  We experienced many late evenings some of which were spent training local dentists.

I worked as a hygienist, assistant, nurse, office manager, supply clerk, lecturer. I can never thank you enough for this experience. I hope to have the opportunity to do it again and feel it has greatly furthered and reinforced Ultradent's mission to improve oral healthcare  – globally!  Attached are some photos of patients and the cases I mentioned above (some are a bit graphic). I hope you enjoy them and can put up with my mind set for a while.  I will probably be bringing up various experiences in conversation for a long, long time… I apologize in advance J!”

Carol Jent, RDH, BA

At the end of the day, we (as dentists, hygienists, dental assistants) have a humanitarian obligation.  We’ve been gifted with the means to improve the oral care of other humans.  It makes no sense to reserve opportunities to provide care for only those we’re blessed to call our patients.

Dan