Living in a Developing Country
I think I’ve mentioned before how it doesn’t take very long for one to start feeling that life in a remote place is normal. Basically, you wake up, go to work, do your job and go home at night. Sure, you may interact with Liberians or Iraqis on a daily basis, but you’re also surrounded by Americans and other expats and you’re definitely following a “normal” routine in life. Occasionally something will strike you as a bit new and, just for a moment, you remember that, indeed, this is not typical life on Main Street, U.S.A.
And then there are those moments that grab you by the throat (or the stomach) and it hits you hard that you are in the third world and you start to think “What in the hell am I doing here?” I’ve just been hit by one of those moments.
When I was in the Army, I lost a tooth and the government decided that I’d be much better off with a bridge on my upper rear molars. At the time, the Doc. told me that it should last about 10 years or so. That was about 22 years ago. Well, a couple of weeks ago, the bridge failed. More accurately, the teeth below it failed. I tried to ignore the obvious for a couple of weeks, thinking that, while it felt a bit funny, that it was the result of stress and that as a result of relaxation exercises, my mouth would soon return to normal. After a couple of weeks I decided to take a real look at it and when I saw that I could move the whole bridge with my fingers I knew I was in trouble.
That’s when it hit me - I’m in Liberia and I need major dental work done!
The next day I went on sick call, got Dr. Hassan’s (a dentist) phone number and paid him a visit. It was as bad as I imagined. Good dentist that he is, he could only come up with an emergency fix and encourage me to find a way to get it fixed properly. So now I’m screwed in the head. Literally. My rear molar has two screws in it, the front molar for the bridge has one screw in it (thank God for root canals!) and the screw heads and glue are holding my bridge in place. Oh yeah, and Dr. Hassan warned me that failure of the bridge now will be catastrophic for the support teeth.
That’s when I discovered my new favorite acronym. DENTEVAC. Short for dental evacuation. Fortunately, the US government takes care of its own when they’re overseas and I was told they would fly me out to have the work done. I had my options to either fly to London for necessary treatment or to pay the difference to fly home and have my own dentist/oral surgeon to do the work. Given that they would only pay for 3 days of per-diem, the treatment would take at least 10 days and London is one of the most expensive places in the world to rent a hotel room, plus the fact that we’re talking about my mouth, I opted for my dentist and the best nurse in the world - Ann!
So three days ago, half way through a 35-hour transit route through Belgium on my way to Portland, OR, I spent a few hours at Newark Airport:
As evening set with New York in the background I waited for my plane to load to get me home.
Tomorrow I see my dentist and then the oral surgeon. On Thursday I see the oral surgeon and then the dentist. On Friday, I’ll still feel like crap, but hopefully I’ll have the start of three implants in place. Early next week should be a final follow-up appointment and then a plane to catch to be back in Liberia by December 21st, because I’m one of two people covering our office over the holiday.
So the bright side of the story is, I’m here with Ann again (sooner than I expected) able to kind of celebrate the holiday season, and I didn’t have to have major oral surgery done in Liberia. I’ll take that over the alternative any day!