Friday...tooth pulling day. I was for sure not prepared for that! Those little kids showed up, walked in, got numbed up and their little rotten teeth pulled right out. Some had up to 6 teeth pulled out. The team did their best to save any teeth that were permanent and can be filled. A local dentist has offered her services for simple cases in the future. Most of the kids walked to the school alone and went home alone afterwards. No forms to sign for permission, nothing like that. Such a difference from how we would handle our own kids getting a tooth pulled. There were only a few who were scared the way they had all been the day before for a simple little shot. Maybe that is because they don't have that done very often. Next time the word will be spread and they will all come in freaked out, IF they come at all. I could not believe how the team came so prepared, they had portable folding dental tables for the kids to lay on, all the right tools...well, not ALL the tools, one dentist was working on a little boy and jokingly asked for 'suction'...which they didn't have. But they laid it all out and even sterilized it in between. Pretty well organized. What was the most shocking to me was that those teeth looked like they were already filled...the whole tops of some teeth were gray black like a silver filling. But how wrong I was. Some of them had only parts of their tooth in there. some were rotted all the way to the root. I've added some gory pictures just so you can see for yourself how gross it was. How in the world were those kids existing, studying, laughing and playing in that condition. My job that day was to hold their little hands and try to talk them through it. Some cried, a few screamed, a few had to be held down, but most handled it really well.