Tickled my funny bone

Chaos rules again, while little miracles pile up to make order again. The autoclave has been acting up for weeks and Sister Stewart has babied it along shutting if off and on to keep the instruments sanitized. Did you know that the pouches that hold the instruments have little indicators that tell when the instruments are sterile?

So hilarious (to me) story on Thursday. It was a very hectic day with lots of situations that seem to not be possible but always work out. I was assisting Dr. Stewart and the men from the autoclave store arrived. Sister Stewart went to talk with them and they came back and put the autoclave on a little cart and started to haul it out of the back room. Dr. Stewart – the mild, gentle man uncharacteristically called out, “Sister Stewart? Don’t let them take the autoclave.” She comes back and he tells her that they need to leave a loaner autoclave here if they take this one away. The men are still heading for the front door. Sister Stewart tells them the dentist doesn’t want them to take it from the office. They are talking maybe gesturing to her about fixing it. Dr. Stewart LEAVES HIS PATIENT and tells people he cannot let them take the autoclave. He comes back and quietly starts working again and Sister Stewart explains how they can’t take the autoclave away. Lots of commotion and talking going on of course in a language I can’t understand. Pretty soon there is someone from the Area office and an interpreter comes. The men bring the autoclave to the back room. As I finish up and take the patient chart to the front, I see three more men who look official from the Area office all talking in some language together. It is decided that a man from the autoclave (store) or office will come out to the MTC Dental office and fix it on Saturday.

Such a simple little machine to cause so much havoc

I was inwardly laughing to see the quiet mild mannered man tell everyone firmly not to take his autoclave out of the office. I think you had to be there to see how funny it really was. 

Actually there is no way to take care of anyone without sterile instruments. Anyway word gets around and even the maintenance man who cleans and takes care of things that goes wrong knows about the incident. Probably lots of people because Dr. Stewart has a quite soft-spoken way about him in the face of patients who are terrified, difficult medical complications, twisted roots, rotted tooth stumps that are stuck, people who feel the office should be shut down, and people assisting him with no idea what they are doing. 

The miracle at the end of the day was all the tools got sterilized and all the missionaries were taken care of – despite malfunctions and language barriers.