SIMS dental team serves in Brazil story by Brian P. Black, SD'00 photos by Shelton Hsu, SD'00 School of Dentistry participants: Brian P. Black SD'00, Michael Costa SD'00, Kip Hampton SD'00, Shelton Hsu SD'00, Jennifer Park SD'02, Todd Young SD'00 and dad Donald Young SD'62, and translator Lucinda Unruh, SAHP'99, office aide in Educational Support Services. "Beef or pasta?" she asked while punctuating the question with a curt smile. "Uh -- beef, I guess," I answered, wondering if this was some sort of VASP Airlines trick question.   Kip Hampton, Dr. Don Young, and Todd Young perform an extraction on the clinic boat.   In the space of a nanosecond the VASP stewardess handed me a cellophane-wrapped plastic tray with what appeared to be the latest in gastrointestinal fortitude testing. Maybe it hadn't been a trick question, but I quickly realized the better answer would have been "pasta." Fortunately, I would be without beef and pasta while in the Amazon Basin. In fact, the staple foods are beans and rice or fish and chicken (not necessarily in that order). With a team of 21 dental and medical students, I would be spending my summer break serving a people living below the equator in a land filled with decayed molars and root tips. It seems that the Amazon is far more than a tropical river swarming with piranha and alligators. Don't get me wrong, the Amazon has its share of piranha and alligators, but it also is home to a very hospitable people living in a rather inhospitable environment. The people are at the mercy of the river: they live by it and often in it. Indeed, the murky current of the Amazon serves as a moving front porch and backyard to many a household. Nevertheless, the villages along the Amazon River are loaded with persons in need of dental and medical attention. Whenever our boat, the Ajurimaua, arrived at a village, canoes loaded with families would appear from some distant parts of the jungle and glide toward us. I recorded one such event in my journal: "Today we treated the village. Many people came by canoes to be seen for malaria, stomach aches, worms. Many of the children have lice. A lot of people have severe dental decay. We probably extracted 100 teeth in the five to six hours we worked nonstop... I could have taken the teeth out of an alligator if they'd asked me to."   Patients whose treatment was completed climb the riverbank back to their village.   We were practicing OSHA-free dentistry. There were no health history forms, no radiographs, no autoclaves, and no insurance forms. There was simply a boat deck, a resin chair, a patient, and a tray of cold-sterilized instruments. The patient would sit down and point to the site of "doi," which means "hurt." We gave the necessary anesthetic injection, pulled the tooth causing said "doi," and sent the patient back to his/her canoe with gauze and Tylenol tablets.   The Amazon cruiser served as home and clinic to the dental team during their two weeks in Brazil.   Though I never actually heard a patient say, "Obrigado, jovem dentista Americano," I'm sure that most of the villagers wanted to, but were prevented by the numbness and gauze packs. Roughly translated, this statement would mean, "Thank you, young American dentist." I was particularly amazed at the strength of character demonstrated by the villagers both young and old. The children, though apprehensive of dental treatment, rarely made any noise at all when we gave injections or pulled teeth. (Then again, the noise they did make was Portuguese, garbled by numbness or gauze.) At any rate, most of the patients sat with a rather stoic expression and seemed genuinely pleased with the treatment we provided. Shelton Hsu and Jennifer Park treat a young villager. Mike Costa, obviously a contender in the beard-growing contest, examines a patient. Shelton Hsu evaluates the piranha, renowned for its fearsome teeth, for a Class III oral surgery; then he and Brian Black extract the piranha's lower incisor. Fortunately, we did more than just extract foreign teeth. We also got to experience the culture. For instance, there was the day we rowed through the jungle in a villager's canoe. This was a perilous journey filled with flying spiders and fire ants. Then there was the day we went swimming in the water that later turned out to be infested with piranha and alligators. We also grew accustomed to the national beverage called Guarana (nonalcoholic but supposedly an aphrodisiac). However, the most significant cultural event in which we partook had to be watching soccer games on satellite TV. Believe it or not, in the middle of the Amazon region (and elsewhere in Brazil), houses have television sets powered by generators and affixed to satellite dishes. At first, it's quite striking to see a satellite dish next to nothing more than a shack sitting on stilts above water, but after seeing it so often, it becomes rather commonplace. The water level in the Amazon Basin was the highest in 40 years, necessitating causeways in the local markets. Despite all of the mosquitos, insects, heat and humidity, the Amazon River is an incredible environment. The landscape varies from village to village, and the majesty of the sunsets is unrivaled. We were even blessed with a full moon on several nights as noted in my journal: "It is truly majestic. Tonight's moon is so bright that it's casting shadows from the trees. In fact the treetops have a glistening pearl-colored shine. It's so bright that I can clearly see the tree line a mile across the river. Truly spectacular and amazingly beautiful." The Amazon was an amazing mission and an incredible mission field. Though we traveled about 350 miles upriver from the middle of Brazil, we saw but a fragment of all that the river has to offer. Even that was loaded with adventure and the opportunity to serve others. As our South American friends would say, "Amazon da bon!" Brian Black, Shelton Hsu, Brazilian dentist Dr. Pedro Blanco, and Dr. Donald Young had a meeting of the minds. Brian Black stores used sharps in a plastic pop bottle. Most of the SIMS Amazon dental team appear in this clinic photo, taken on the lower deck of the boat they lived on for two weeks. Shelton Hsu and other members of the team sang Christian songs with the Amazon people. University | Medical_Center | LLU&MC_home | Search | Employment | News_&_events | Academics | Our_mission | Admissions | Registration | Research | Alumni | Student_resources All contents copyright © 2001 Loma Linda University. 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