Our Cambodian patients today were exceptional. Most had never seen a dentist before but they accepted us with some curiosity and a little trepidation.
We weren't sure what to expect. Though our visit had been scheduled for several months, we heard at the last minute that the school scheduled some tests for students and that we might not get a large turnout. As you can imagine a buzz moved through our group last night that maybe our long journey to Kep was in vain.
Fortunately, the turnout was better than we expected considering the testing schedule we saw about 120 patients. For these patients we did 70 extractions of deciduous teeth and 19 extractions of permanent teeth. For our group, this is an extremely small number of patients. And we're left to wonder what would have been had the school administration taken advantage of our presence.
But this is sometimes how it goes when we visit a new area. Not all new areas will be re-visited next year and surely Kep will be off the list. Tomorrow we return to the local orphanages around Phnom Penh that are our regular stops. Though we won't be here next week, the group will add a new area and if they are organized and present a large number of patients, it may become a regular stop on our trip.
Sadly, there are more than enough towns to choose from. Cambodia is replete with poor underserved areas. Ironically people in Kep asked us to come, but weren't able to organize a busy enough day for our group to be able to return.
Everyone here is giving up time in their own offices and no one wants to stand around. Again this year, the highlight for our group were the 18 year old translators who we brought from a Phenom Penh orphanage. They are terrific with our patients, empathetic and kind. And we love to hear how these former "street children" are working toward college or trade school admission.
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