Ellensburg

I figured I'd give you all a little insight into Ellensburg life. I really like it, a completely different vibe than Yakima and I'm not sure which I like more but it lets me see a completely different side of community health care which I like (Ellensburg has a candy drawer, definitely tugs at my hear strings). The drive is a little brutal and it's a late night but it's worth it.

Today I was going to do a child recall exam and had the mind set that it was going to be "easy", just another prophy. I soon realized that nothing is "easy" or "routine" each procedure has new obstacles and challenges to work around.

This young girl spoke English but her mother did not. When I reviewed her chart before bringing her back I noticed that she was recently in for an emergency exam for a tooth ache. She had an infected primary tooth that she refused to have removed. When I brought her back and looked in her mouth my heart broke. All of her gums were swollen many missing and decayed teeth, basically her mouth was just in really bad shape. Her primary tooth that was causing her pain was still in there, it was black and falling apart but she refused again to have me touch it let alone wiggle it. As I was doing her prophy I noticed that 2 of her PERMANENT molars were complelty bombed out, worse that I had seen in most of the adults. The entire distal buccal surface was gone, like caved out. I'm not making a ton of sense here but my point is that it is so tough to see young children whose oral health is already in such poor shape. She needed a root canal on a tooth that had been in her mouth for only 3 years. Her 1 year old sister was also there alternating between bottles of milk and juice. It just made me want to do more. The mother clearly didn't know the effects of what her children ate, drank, etc on their future health. One of the hygienist asked to look in the baby's mouth only to find decay on her teeth, she's 1!

This experience has made me, more than ever, want to help kids. They are helpless to what their parents know, and unfortunately many parents don't know what is right. This has definitely inspired me, I guess that's a good thing!