ASDOH students change lives in rural Mexico
Posted: January 28, 2011
David, a 6-year-old boy from Chiapas, Mexico, traveled with his family 18 hours by car to receive the second in a series of surgeries to repair his cleft lip and palate. Maria, a young woman in her 20s, walked with a noticeable limp and couldn’t use her right arm. She complained of pain in her left jaw, was diagnosed with temporal-mandibular joint dysfunction, and required multiple restorations. Neither knew their eventual transformations would involve much more than medical care.
Reaching out to serve
David and Maria were just two of the many lives changed when ATSU-Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health students traveled to the rural town of Atoyac, Mexico, at Clinica Betel to treat the underserved.
Also impacted were 30 volunteers, including ASDOH Assistant Professor Tim Lukavsky, D.D.S.; fourth-year dental students Brett Flaherty, Brian Banks, Marisa Lee, and Stanley Cox; third-year dental student Tanner Flaherty (Brett’s brother); and a group of volunteers from Louisiana and Texas, which included anesthesiologists, plastic surgeons, general surgeons, ophthalmologists, and surgical and dental assistants. Dr. Lukavsky’s daughter Sabrina and family friend Ben Wachter (a pre-dental student) also volunteered. Spouses and children helped with meals, sterilizing instruments, and taking care of recovering patients.
ASDOH student volunteers became involved because of Dr. Lukavsky’s friendship with Latin WORLD Ministries, the physician mission group that sponsors the trip to Clinica Betel twice each year. This is the 13th year that Dr. Lukavsky has participated in the project, and “after seeing the work ethic, compassion, and care for these people by our ASDOH students, five to eight ASDOH students are wanted for next year’s trip,” he says.
Located about two hours from Acapulco, Clinica Betel is a surgical and dental facility that opened in 1995 after a surgeon in Louisiana, Russell Romero, M.D., D.D.S, brought children from Mexico to the United States for cleft lip and palate surgeries. After finding great difficulty in getting the children out of Mexico, Dr. Romero decided to build a clinic where people could be served in their hometown.
Clinica Betel “the compound” now comprises several acres with multiple buildings consisting of housing, a church, a dental clinic, surgical suites, and recovery rooms.
The clinic is operated through donations collected by participating doctors. Mexican local aid provides necessities such as clean water and electricity.
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Forming a bond
The night before David’s surgery, he and his family passed time with ASDOH students. “Even with our limited Spanish-English communication,” says student Brett Flaherty, “David could not stop telling us how happy he was that we were here to fix him.”
On the day of the surgery, it was a combined effort from all surgical teams. Surgeons closed the roof of David’s mouth that was once his combined nasal and oral cavity and which made it extremely difficult for him to eat, drink, breathe, and speak. The day after surgery, David was up bright and early and happy as ever. He and his dad threw their arms around team members and thanked them for making the journey into their lives.
“The road for David has been long, since his surgeries are spaced out with the mission trip being only twice a year,” Dr. Lukavsky says. “But with each mission trip David knows that he is one step closer to being made whole. His smile is priceless, and it is a special feeling to know that we have been part of making that possible for him.”
The first time Brian Banks met Maria, she was having a seizure in Clinica Betel’s waiting room. “After the episode subsided and she relaxed for about 15 minutes, I invited her back to provide dental care,” Banks says. “After questioning her about her teeth and running diagnostic tests, I realized Maria’s jaw pain was from the boney mandible and temporal-mandibular joint area.”
With hesitancy, she described that her father had recently hit her in the face and beat her repeatedly proclaiming that she was ugly and a curse to the family. Her mother also physically and verbally abused her.
Banks provided a dental cleaning and restorations to remove dental caries from her mouth but says, “The dental services I rendered that day took a back seat to the friendship that was formed.
“As Maria stood up from her dental chair, and as I escorted her to the exit she threw her arms around me and thanked me for my services,” he says. “I learned through an interpreter that Maria was amazed that someone would actually do something nice for her. Maria and I walked to the waiting room where I stopped and told her ’Tu eres bonita,’ which means ’you are beautiful.’ ”
Banks, a former member of the Florida Marlins baseball team, says, “This was an amazing experience —to make a difference by providing dental care — but to provide hope and love to these people was the real reward of this journey.”
During the course of nearly five days, the team performed more than 50 general and cleft palate surgeries and 60 eye exams. More than 300 dental patients were treated, and ASDOH volunteers provided 300 fillings, 400 extractions, multiple root canals, and 15 new dentures.
“We often worked 11- to 13-hour days and then would run four-hour shifts throughout the night caring for patients who had major surgeries,” Brett Flaherty says. “Despite the energy this effort required, I was amazed that all volunteers pushed forward with excitement.
“There is strength in serving others. It was motivating to get out of bed and get to work when we knew that patients had traveled great distances to arrive before sunrise to seek services that would relieve their pain and conditions.”