How Often Does Your Dentist Save Your Life?

Last Saturday as we watched the kids play beach soccer I chatted to the Lead Dentist, Mark Bullock, about his week. I thought I had had a tough week and was tired after being duty engineer Saturday and Wednesday, bunkering late on Wednesday plus some frustrations completing some planned maintenance checks. Then Mark told me about his week which was the usual of many patients and tooth extractions but included a particularly challenging patient on Thursday. To give an idea of how busy they have been, they seen about 1400 patients and conducted about 3100 dental procedures in 7 weeks up to 19Oct13. How does that compare to your dentist?

How often does your dentist save your life? For most of us the answer is never. Last Thursday a patient arrived at the dental clinic after patient screening and selection had completed. However the guards could see the man's need and admitted him. Well this man had a very serious dental infection that had caused pus to accumulate beneath the floor of his mouth. Mark described it as grapefruit sized and pushing his tongue up three inches. This was resulting in his airway being almost completely blocked. The man could barely breathe and could not lie down as this completely blocked his airway. This guy was seriously in immediate danger of dying....from a tooth infection.

So the most immediate concern was to reduce the swelling in order to clear the his airway. To do this Mark needed to extract the tooth or teeth causing the infection. But which teeth? They all looked bad which is apparently pretty common. Anyway the man was able to tell Mark which side the infection started so he targeted the worst two teeth on this side. Oh, and by the way, they are not set up for general anaesthetic at the dental clinic so the whole procedure was done under local anaesthetic. Well Mark and the other Dentist - Annette - chose correctly and found pus under the extracted teeth. This allowed some immediate relief but as pus does not drain up (it's a gravity thing) they also had to establish a drain to drain the pus out which they did successfully. I didn't quite understand the mechanics of it (being an engineer and not a dentist) but it sounded challenging enough. After this the man was able to swallow and was given antibiotics then and there before being sent home.

The man was given instructions to go return the following day for a follow up check and if it worsened overnight to go to hospital. However Mark had a sleepless night worrying about his patient who was okay and turned up on Friday. He was given the same instructions for the weekend and told to return Monday morning to be checked again, which he did and he was fine.

So I don't know this man nor what he does or if he has a family. But without Mark's skill he almost certainly would have died. And if he had a family, they would have been without their primary breadwinner. And maybe others were reliant on him for their jobs too...so the impact of his death would have been even greater.

Mark out walking with us when we first arrived in Congo

And Mark couldn't be here without the support of his family and friends who provide support to his family. But Mark has a family of three boys all attending the onboard school so he could not be here without the presence of the Principal and teachers, who are all volunteers too, supported by their families and friends. And my small part in this process is maintaining the life boats, pumps, sewage plant and safety systems that keep the ship running safely. So even though the engineers, deckies and academy staff don't directly contribute to saving and changing lives in Africa, it is satisfying to know that we all played a small but important part in our Lead Dentist being here to save this man's life.

Post Script - After only seeing one such patient in Guinea last year, Mark had two more cases similar to this one this week. All were successfully treated and are recovering.