Clinica Betel Atoyac Mexico

So Donnie said since I have been goofing off so much I must do my own post to update everyone on my adventures. 2 weeks ago Tanner and I headed off to Mexico for a week long dental mission with 3 other classmates (Brian, Stan and Marisa), a faculty member Dr. Tim who invited us to join him on this trip and we met up with a group of 20 others from Louisiana and Texas that consisted of general and plastic surgeons, ophthalmologist, anesthesiologist, surgical assistants and many other volunteers. We headed to Clinica Betel in Atoyac Mexico, a small town about 2hours from Acapulco where we flew in to. That was the tough part, convincing everyone we were going on a dental mission when our plane ticket had Acapulco written on it.
A lot has been going on in Mexico (200 murders per month due to drug cartel in the region where we were headed) so the trip that was scheduled back in January was on and they assured us we would be safe! Does this look SAFE?



We were escorted to and from the airport to the clinic by armed vehicles and had guards on duty 24-7! We all felt this was drawing more attention to us but what do I know.
Clinica Betel is a surgical/dental facility that was started in 1995 after a couple of surgeons brought some children up to the states for cleft lip and palate surgeries and due to the difficulty of getting them out of Mexico they decided to build a clinic that they could serve these people in their own town. The “Compound” now covers several acres with multiple buildings consisting of housing, a church, dental clinic, surgical suites, recovery rooms, and much more. Here is a glimps of the facility.






Here was a 6mo old that we did a cleft surgery on. We had to splint the arms so that the baby wouldn’t pull apart the sutures.
One of the coolest parts of this mission was many of the cleft surgeries needed dental work prior or we would identify complicated cases that would be better served under general anesthesia so the anesthesiologist would sleep many patients for us and we could do much of the dentistry in the OR. Pretty wicked!

Brian and Stan using their OR privileges on a young boy that could not tolerate the needed treatment of multiple extractions and fillings.

Tanner and I working on a case in the OR, we got to pull a lot more impacted wisdom teeth with the use of general anesthesia.


We got back to Acapulco on Friday after noon so we enjoyed a little time there. Some of the local help picked us up in limos on Friday night and took us to a very nice restaurant.

Dorks with empty glasses.

Saturday we had some down time before our flight so we booked a deep sea fishing excursion. I forgot for a little while that I was a dental student.


That is a face of reeling in a big one!

We caught 2 Sail Fish over 9 feet long. Well, it is back to reality but I am officially a 4th year dental student so this is the last year!