Willow Glen Resident

Community

Photograph by Diana Diroy

Helping Others: Willow Glen resident Nancy Gum (from left), an orthodontist, was accompanied by her children Mike, Ali and Kate Roussel on a volunteer mission to Belize to provide dental care. The children helped their mother during the eight-day stay.

Nancy Gum and her children help create brighter smiles in Belize

By Lydia Sarraille

Filling cavities, pulling teeth and making dentures isn't what most people would consider vacation activities, but for Nancy Gum and her children, Ali, Kate and Mike Roussel, it was part of their trip to Belize.

Gum, an orthodontist, went as part of the Belize Mission Project, an annual event started by Dr. Frank Whipps of Centralia, Ill., that brings dental professionals to Belize to volunteer their services to the community.

Gum said she had been looking for a mission trip for about a year when she saw the Belize project as a perfect fit.

"I had been looking for a mission to take the kids on," Gum said. "I wanted to do something they could participate in that would involve my specific talents."

Practicing general dentistry is something Gum doesn't get to do much anymore in her work as an orthodontist, and she was glad to make use of her skills.

"We gave people back their teeth," said Gum.

Many of the Belize inhabitants have severe tooth decay, causing their teeth either to fall out or be extracted. In this Third World country on the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America, proper dental care is hard to come by.

The trip not only helped residents of Belize, but the Gum family as well.

"Going on a trip like this is an amazing experience," Gum said. "When you give, you get so much back. I think it was a wonderful thing to involve my children."

Ali, 13, accrued 40 hours of community service, which she applied toward requirements in her student leadership class at Willow Glen Middle School.

Ali and Kate helped their mother by sterilizing dental equipment in the makeshift clinics set up by locals, while Mike took on the task of rubbing his mom's neck after she spent hours bent over patients.

"I relieved my mom's stress," Mike, 10, said.

The Belize volunteers spent eight days on location. During that time, they extracted teeth, did cleanings and filled cavities as well as created prosthetic teeth for people who had lost some or most of their real teeth to decay.

"It's a really impoverished area," Gum said.

Gum and her family spent part of their trip in the city of San Pedro on the island of Ambergris Caye, and the rest was spent on a second island called Caye Caulker.

On Caye Caulker, Gum worked with other volunteers out of a small building next to a dive shop, which also furnished tanks of compressed air to run the dentists' drills. Gum said all the volunteers brought their own equipment.

Patients sat in reclining lawn chairs while Gum, sitting in a white plastic patio chair, worked on their teeth. Her main light source was strapped to her head.

"It was very strange to work in such a limited environment," Gum said. "We didn't have running water usually, so we'd have to run back and forth to the nearest hose."

Ali, Kate and Mike said they were most affected by the children who came for dental care.

"We set up a coloring table for the little kids who were waiting," 12-year-old Kate said. "They asked us if we would do it again the next day, and one little girl asked if she could have some of the coloring papers to take back to her class."

Gum applied sealants to the teeth of many children, a process that coats teeth and helps prevent cavities from forming.

"It was the kids who were the most rewarding to work on," Gum said. "They were the ones we could save before they got too bad."

The experience was so rewarding for the entire family that Gum hopes they can return next year.