Elena Speranza-Moll – Speaker Coordinator

I talk to the Doctors in the Hospital and ask them if I can help.
“Do you need me, can I be of any help? I am trained like you…”
“No, Elena thank you. You help us by doing what you are doing. If it weren’t for you, they would come here to the pronto soccorso and that is the last thing we need.”
Being a Dentist during the Covid-19 Lockdown makes sense after all.

Daily I receive phone calls from patients who are in pain, but their dentist is not available. So again I go. Alone, because no assistants are permitted. In the mailbox I find a plastic bag with inside protheses, broken in two, probably to be repaired, with attached a letter: Cara Dottoressa…
I dress myself with surgical gown and shoe covers, 3 masks and double eye-screen, a haircuf and 2 pairs of gloves. Everything smells of bleach and alcohol. All surfaces are wiped now and it gives me an acute headache. Of course I forgot: The windows are to be opened.

The patient arrives. She wears her mask but her eyes look miserable and in pain. I make her wash her hands with soap and alcohol and rinse one minute with a mouthwash that kills Covid instantly would it be present in her mouth. Fortunately it is an easy root canal treatment and I am able to remove the pain immediately. After her I have half an hour time to go through the whole protocol of cleaning and disinfecting the surroundings all over again. The next patient is an 8-year-old girl with not one, but two abscesses near her milk teeth.
When I drive home a tear runs down my cheek. My Cry-hour, releasing the cropped up stress and worries for everything, for The World.