Incoming third-year dental student Chrissy Tiller is lucky: Born with complicated jaw abnormalities, she had access to excellent dental and orthodontic care as a child, which gave her a beautiful, healthy smile. But a recent experience taught her that many children around the world aren’t as fortunate.
Shortly before entering dental school, Tiller, then a dental assistant, was invited to travel with her dentist boss on an overseas mission to Juan Dolio, a hurricane-ravaged town on the southern coast of the Dominican Republic. “We saw abandoned cars, homes and hotels everywhere,” she says. The group spent a week performing exams and treatments on patients aged 6 to 12 living in a children’s home. “They don’t use the word ‘orphanage’ because they want the children to feel as though they’re a family,” explains Tiller.
Conditions were primitive. Water was both scarce and dirty, and the electricity was unpredictable. “One moment we could run a handpiece [a hand-held drill or other equipment], and the next we couldn’t, with no hint as to when it would come on again,” she says. Poor diet and a lack of regular dental care had taken its toll on Tiller’s young patients. Some just needed a basic cleaning, but others had teeth so full of cavities and decay that they had to be extracted.
One patient in particular stands out in Tiller’s mind: a 10-year-old girl who came to them with two chipped front teeth. In a culture where beauty matters and young women bring honor to their families through marriage, this could have potentially ruined her chances for a happy, stable life. Tiller and the dentist fixed the damage and were rewarded with the girl’s grateful smile. “We found out later that day that she had spent most of the afternoon lying on a slide headfirst so all her friends could see her new teeth,” says Tiller. “It was very sweet!”
But most of all, the trip opened Tiller’s eyes to the realities of the state of dental health care in underserved areas of the world. Once she graduates from the Midwestern University College of Dental Medicine in Glendale, Ariz., she plans to travel on similar mission “vacations” every year. “The experience changed my attitude. I no longer blindly take what we have for granted,” she says. “It inspired me to do what I can to help in the future.”
