It’s every missionary doctor’s nightmare.
After all, we are the ones other missionaries and the local people turn to for advice and help, in time of desperation. So when we’ve racked our brains for creative solutions and treatments, exhausted our own stash of medical supplies, consulted our extensive network of colleagues for advice, and still find ourselves undone, it’s almost like waving a white flag, conceding defeat.
This time, I was sure, I wasn’t going down.
I would stick it out, and things would be okay. It had happened several times before, and I survived. Understanding its cause, its humiliating effect on me and its untimely strategy to strike whenever I was preparing for a major exam or travelling, made me want to triumph over it all the more. Just like each time before, I was certain it would go away and give me peace eventually.
But it didn’t.
Day after day, the pain gnawed at me. At night, it was worse, giving me no rest. After consulting some medical colleagues, I decided to self-medicate, in response to a concerned “Oh no, you don’t want to go through a minor surgery or procedure in Africa, do you? Who knows how sterile things are there?”
I wasn’t afraid of that. After visiting the local facilities, I told my husband I was prepared to give birth in Uganda, when and if the time called for it. Deep down inside, I knew it was a pathological fear from my childhood days that plagued me from getting the help I needed.
Before arriving in Africa, we had completed all our medical and dental checks. Relieved that my last dental consult had confirmed that all my wisdom teeth were in good order, I rejoiced. I had resented the previous dentist I had seen, who had insisted I needed 4 wisdom teeth and 2 or more premolar extractions, including braces for a period of 3 to 5 years. Upon hearing such dire news, I closed my mouth shut and chickened out, only to have my jaw drop at the cashier when I saw the receipt amount to a few hundred dollars for his brief consult. I left the clinic certain that I was not training to become Miss Universe and that my teeth were fine the way they were.
As a child, I had seen the dark evil and power dentists could wield. They brought tears to my best friends and my own sister. Extractions, braces, endless visits, and days of sulking and tears imprinted themselves onto my memory, even if they did not happen to me. I did not want to go through that.
“I’ll arrange the necessary for you when you’re back in Singapore,” my dental-postgraduate friend from home texted me considerately, “You really should get that tooth, and more wisdom teeth out then. Unless you’re very very adventurous and want to do it in Africa, of course.” She left a cheeky-faced emoticon at the end of her sentence.
Adventurous? No, I was through with Adventurous. I had had my fair share of unpredictable outcomes and surprises in Africa. After the dentist on-site the public health institute where we stay had looked disdainfully into my mouth for five seconds before I had to write my own prescription of drugs, I decided I was not going to see another.
At the urging of my husband and my dentist friend back home, I eventually agreed to see a decent dentist in town for some debridement, and go straight back home, to my own anti-inflammatory and analgesic concoction of drugs.
Quietly, my husband drove me into the crazy, headache-inducing maze of the city, sharing with me his charming experience of having 4 teeth smashed from a bike accident in Canada, and how God had provided for them to be repaired, in spite of gum-swelling complications caused by the side effects of his liver transplant medication. I listened admirably, resisting having to get out of the car to see the Ugandan dentist recommended by a friend of a friend of a friend.
“Dr. B’s fully booked till next week,” I said, half-relieved, “Who knows we won’t be able to see anyone today.”
A tall, slender, elegant Ugandan lady ushered me into her clinic room.
“You must be Dr. Tam,” she said, looking at my card. “I’m fully booked this morning, but I just wanted to make sure you were okay. “Let me have a look.”
As gently and meticulously as she had assessed the problem, she broke the news to me, “It needs to go. And the other 3 will need to go, in time, too. But let’s take it a step at a time. I have a cancellation this afternoon. Would you like to come in then?”
For some reason I knew I was caught this time. What she said echoed everything the other dentist had said, except in kinder, more compassionate terms. Shocked and stressed, with the gloomy prospect of me suffering in obstinate pain through the 2nd wedding anniversary surprise my husband would be planning for me in the next week, I decided to bite the bullet and be “adventurous”.
“I’ll be back in 2 hours for the extraction,” I said.
I texted close friends to pray for me. I did not disclose or admit it, but I was terrified.
“I pray your procedure will be fast and painless,” a friend texted back. I wanted to laugh. Fast and painless? Really?
It was at times like this that I saw God’s hand in all of this. Here was a compassionate, competent Ugandan dentist He had provided for me in a foreign, third-world country, and a stubborn oral problem I could not solve on my own. My only option was to trust Him, and believe that just as how He had looked after me back home in Singapore with first-world medicine, He would look after me here, in the heart of Africa, too.
My husband held my hand, “I’m so proud of you,” he said, not knowing I was having vivid hallucinations of myself wailing on the dental chair, rushing out of the clinic screaming that I had changed my mind.
“Hold it together, woman. You’re a medical doctor,” I chided myself.
It was not what I expected. I was expecting drilling, sucking, drilling, cutting, and an elaborate process of gleaning the tooth out. Instead, a rather crude couple of yanks and a clean pull later, the giant molar came loose in minutes, with a tiny bit of my jaw bone attached to it. Before I knew it, it was over without any stitches needed. And it was as quick as it was painless, too.
“Thank you so much, Dr. B.”
The X-rays, extraction and the consult fee which she waived for me kindly after knowing I was a missionary doctor, amounted to no more than fifty dollars, a sum that would hardly pay for a routine scaling at a dentist back home. With a piece of cotton in my mouth, I walked to the waiting room, only to be received by Cliff’s big hug and his gigantic pearly whites, saying jokingly and lovingly, “Wow. You’re just as wise and beautiful after a wisdom tooth extraction.”
After dinner, we were both pleasantly surprised and touched to receive a phonecall from Dr. B, who just wanted to be sure “I was doing okay”.
I survived the night with no painkillers. There simply wasn’t much pain to be relieved at all.
Before I left for Africa, I had wondered what the healthcare landscape of this country would be like. I had heard numerous horror stories, and also knew of missionaries who had to fly all the way back home for dental procedures or medical care. I had often wondered what I would do when the time came, when I myself needed treatment.
But this taught me, that no matter where we are, God looks after us. As we are faithful to Him, He is faithful to us, too. Though a wisdom tooth extraction is a relatively small matter, compared to say, an appendicectomy, it gave me the breakthrough I needed in my spirit, to trust God in all things, even in areas that I had been bound in by fear for years.
My husband and I both agreed I had received the most affordable, compassionate and best dental care in my life. We even made the next appointment for the subsequent extractions.
Sometimes, Adventurous may not be such a bad idea after all, if it lands us straight into the palm of our Father’s hand.
“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands…”
– Isaiah 49:16