Yep--that title more or less sums up the Dental/Spring Break 1 Session. :) It was fun and silly and productive and frustrating and miraculous and I loved it! It felt really good to come back to what I did for ten years of my life. While I wasn't a fan of feeling stagnant and the suffocating level of estrogen found in most offices, I have nothing but love for actual dentistry. And it felt so good to help "my" kids in such a specific way. I see so many people come to RSO and share their vocal, dancing, artistic, teaching and athletic talents and while I absolutely LOVE that they do that, I always kind of wish I had more tangible talents to share with the kids. BUT-having the dental clinic up and running over the last couple of weeks has given me an opportunity to do that. Not that going to the dentist is remotely in the same league as playing football or cricket with the kids, but I know what I mean.
Plus I loved the people I got to work with. The Collin's family is AMAZING! Aaron (Dr. Collins) is a pediatric dentist and his wife Tara has dental assisting background. The first week of the Dental Clinic consisted of Tara and I cleaning teeth/triaging all the kids.
So I may have "pulled" one of his teeth. But not really, it was so lose that I just tipped it with my fingers (with his permission of course) and out it came. The look on his face was awesome though. I don't know if he didn't quiet understand what I asked him or what but it was pretty funny. He had a big smile on his face afterwords though so I have a feeling he was proud of himself for losing his tooth.
And I had to include a pic of her because she is beautiful and was sporting a GORGEOUS flower hair piece:
Unfortunately, the
cleaning quickly turned into only triaging and introducing the kids to the
clinic since both our machines broke. We were able to do some toothbrush prophys and flouride on the smaller children but we eventually ran out of kids we could get away with that on. Actually, we had a TON of things break and go wrong that first week. It still ended up being a productive week but not
being able to clean all the kids during the first week (like we had hoped and
planned to do) was a bit frustrating. One time Tara and I were talking about our frustrations and making yet another game plan in my room when she looked out my window and started laughing saying "You have men in skirts working right outside your window!!" And it was completely true. Apparently it was exactly what both of us need because we both started laughing and of course we had to take some pictures. I am ashamed to say that I've seen them out there for a few days now and didn't think anything of it. I guess that just goes to show how use I am to seeing men wear skirts, even when working and even when it is right outside my window. :)
This one (Berlyn) tuned the old age of 19 during the Dental/Spring Break #1 Session. We attacked her with a faulty confetti sprayer and balloons in the morning,
and held a lip synch battle (per her request) that night. I didn't personally participate but I LOVED watching it! Turns out we have some pretty good lip synch-ers in our group. Jaxon and Ethan did a song about sideburns and even included a sideburn rockin' baby,
Bryan did "Come Sail Away" if for no other reason then the music called for some serious kicking and dancing,
Berlyn and Caroline chose "Dancing Queen"
Saychelle worked it (as per usual) by performing "Hold On" by Wilson and Phillips. She even threw in wicked head banging moves,
Yes you are seeing that right, we were graced with the presence of Aladdin and Jasmine as they performed A Whole New World, on a magic carpet, that was flying in the wind (courtesy of Saychelle).
I think Aladdin and Jasmine stole the show. It was so funny because they got so into their characters--so much so that Jasmine ended up copping a feel of Aladdin when she put her hand on his chest to gaze into his dreamy eyes.
The second week brought us some more volunteers, Dr. Collins being one of them. Tara had told me that they call Aaron the "Child Whisperer", and it took me all of 2 minutes to understand why. He was SOOO good with the kids. I have never seen anything like it. I have to admit I was a little nervous that the kids would hate me after I worked on/or helped to work on them in the dental clinic, but it wasn't that way at all. It was more or less a dental party (professionally run party that is) with lots of laughter, pictures and work happening simultaneously. There was such a fun energy of curiosity and learning.
We had some children that were a little nervous but that was about it. No actual screamers. Its a miracle right? Varalakshmi was one of the nervous ones but we worked with her to where she let me clean her teeth and give her "tooth vitamins" after all. She did great.
Kaviya, was really good at acting like she was super scared but if you looked at her for a second you could see her grinning behind the fists she had trembling up around her mouth. She and Sangeetha had this whole act planned out. It was pretty impressive. Those two are the most sassy and cunning little girls. Its a good thing they are so freaking cute.
And speaking of cute, well we know that Charles is the epitome of cute,
but the other cute thing I was referring to was watching Jaxon (Tara and Aaron's son) interact with the kids. It is always fun watching the kids with the volunteers but Jaxon seemed to have a special connection with the kids. Besides his fun personality and loving nature, one of Jaxon's biggest draw was his hat--that he was so kind to share with the kids.
Ethan interactions with the kids were a little more entertaining--as all the children were all in love with him. Hahahah oh Frodo.....errr I mean Ethan.
Anyway, back to dentistry, Guna did so good! It made me one proud sponsor mama.
And we can't forget Mishba. She was the last student we saw. Dr. Collins fixed her broken front tooth and it looked so good!
Here's a picture of our meager dental clinic staff:
and all our charts--the top shelf is all the files we fully completed. The amount of work we were able to get done in a few week--but really only 4 days when we had fully working machines and our dentist--was nothing short of miraculous. And that was only one of the many different miracles that we witnessed through out the last couple of weeks. Seeing how everything just kept working out was quiet the humbling experience and resulted in me reflecting on a lot of different things.
But of course to be fair we didn't do it without the helping hands of all the volunteers. Technically, the Dental Session and Spring Break Session #1 were separate events but really it all just became one big group. Most of the Spring Break Session #1 volunteers had some medical background and even those who didn't picked things up quickly and just jumped right in. It really was a golden group. Despite all our obstacles, the whole thing ended up being a pretty flawless operation.
