Special Olympics

I had the opportunity this past week to spend two days at the International Special Olympics in Boise with the rest of the dental hygiene crew. They have a program called Healthy Athletes where all of the athletes can come and receive free care. The Healthy Athletes Initiative is made up of seven disciplines including Fit Feet, FUNfitness, Healthy Hearing, Health Promotion, Opening Eyes®, MedFest and Special Smiles®. It's great because the athletes get everything they need free of charge including free eye glasses, hearing aids, emergency dental care, tennis shoes, etc. We helped out at the Special Smiles venue (of course) doing screenings, giving education, providing fluoride treatments, and making mouthguards. I had a blast. On the first day my job was to greet the teams as they came in and escort an athlete to the first station where they were screened for tooth decay, pain, missing teeth, etc. If they were in pain we tried to get them downstairs where they had a bus set up for emergency fillings and extractions. I spent most of the second day at the education station.This is Jenn, me, Alisa, Heidi, and Michelle all waiting for Vice President Joe Biden to complete his tour of Healthy Athletes. We all had to wait downstairs for security purposes. We were hoping he would come to the top of the stairs and at least wave to all of us, but he snuck out the back. So we just saw him and his entourage of twenty police cars driving away. It was still kind of cool though. The scarves we are wearing came from the scarf project. They had a goal to collect 5000 homemade scarves to give to the athletes to help welcome them to Idaho and the winter Olympic games. They had such a great response from people around the US and they ended up with over 55,000 scarves, so we all got to pick one out for keeps.
These are my hygiene girls (minus two). Monday through Friday, 8-5, this is who I spend my time with. As happy as I am to be graduating soon, I will miss all of the great friends I've made in this program.Alicia, M'Lisa, Kylee, me, Jenn, and one of the athletes at the education station. We would use the stuffed animals to show them how they should be brushing and flossing. The language barrier made this a little bit interesting with some of the athletes. It was funny how we would show them how to brush their tongue and some of them thought that was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen and refused to do it.
We went to watch some of the floor hockey games on Friday morning. This is Italy vs. Cyprus. It was a lot of fun to see some of the athletes in action. They are so talented in what they do. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to participate. I met so many wonderfully kind people from around the world. Even amongst the intellectual challenges that they face, they were all so happy and grateful for what they have. I really appreciate the professors that went to bat for us against the other professors to make sure we were able to participate.