We all started the day early for the 72 km trip to Trece Martires with our drivers arriving at OMF headquarters at 7am. After praying together for a safe trip we departed all excited to begin our medical and dental clinics. The traffic did not disappoint us as we managed to travel 9 km in 2 hours eventually arriving in Trece 3.5 hours later. The weather was also one of our concerns with heaving rain falling for the last 20 minutes of our journey only to stop miraculously just as we arrived.
Having already spoken to Apple and Melanie about how we would like things set up for the clinic we were delighted to find everything had been taken care of so all that was left for us to do was to set up the instruments and sterilisation equipment. With that all done we enjoyed a lovely lunch prepared and cooked for us by the volunteers of Bukang Liwayway We were now ready to start our first clinic.
Arriving back at the basketball court we were amazed to see so many people needing our help. We had all 3 dentists seeing patients in make shift dental chairs,they even had headrests thanks to Van’s creativity and each had an interpreter to help explain their treatment. The sterilisation of instruments was my responsibility but I was extremely lucky to have the help of Melanie who was a godsend,she was able to do a large part of the sterilisation which left me to run between the dentists and assist them when the
y needed it. We even managed to do a surgery with our limited equipment which is truly amazing. On the medical side Leo and Betty had the help of their interpreters to assist them in their treatment plans which went smoothly assisted by Carrie who dispensed any medication they required. We saw 39 medical patients, 26 dental patients who had 53 teeth extracted and 6 fillings done. Kim held the record of removing 11 teeth from one single patient. We truly were blessed that the clinics ran so efficiently.
The afternoon ended with another cooked meal,a devotion and a few moving testimonies that was shared between the teams,volunteers and members of Bukang Liwayway.