Rosie's front teeth

While on the dental team during the second outreach, a small girl (5 or 6years old) came to the clinic. Her name was Rosie. Rosie’s parents were very concerned for her because she was in a lot of pain and had stopped eating due to this pain in her mouth. When our dentist Alice and her assistant Shey, had a look in Rosie’s mouth, they found that her two front adult teeth were impacting the baby teeth that hadn’t yet fallen out. Because these baby teeth hadn’t fallen out yet, they had begun to decay and poor Rosie had two abscesses on her gums over her top two teeth (an infected sac of pus on the gums).
These baby teeth had to come out! 

Alice and Shey took their time with little Rosie and were so careful and lovely to her during this scary process. You have to remember, that Rosie had probably never even seen white people before, let alone had teeth pulled by a dentist on a ship! Rosie was so brave and didn’t make a sound as dentist Alice pulled her front baby teeth and drained the abscesses. Believe it or not Rosie left the clinic that day smiling! My guess was that she was so excited to eat dinner that night!! This is not an uncommon problem in the Gulf Province of PNG. People go years with tooth pain! Yet these simple tooth extractions saved little Rosie from the risk of malnutrition and ongoing sickness. Great work Alice and Shey!!