Roanoke's free dental clinic restores smiles

It is 9 a.m. on Friday the 13th, and the whine of many dentist drills cannot be ignored.

“I’m scared,” Kelly Witcher says as she waits in line. On the other side of a white curtain, volunteer dentists are filling the cavities of teeth that can be saved and pulling the ones that can’t as part of the Roanoke Mission of Mercy Project, which provides free dental care to the poor and uninsured.

Witcher has already been to the mobile X-ray truck, parked outside the Roanoke Civic Center, where it became clear that a number of her teeth are so decayed they must be extracted.

“Maybe eight, it looks like,” she says.

But for all the dread that might come with a long-delayed trip to the dentist, Witcher is like most of the other patients: grateful to receive care they cannot afford, and eager to be rid of the pain that brought them here.

The clinic, which continues today at the civic center, is expected to treat 800 people in need of cleanings, fillings, extractions, dentures and other dental work.

In a large exhibit hall, reclining dental chairs surrounded by portable equipment were lined up in rows, with dentists working side-by-side on as many as 40 people at once.

Nearly 60 percent of the procedures were extractions — the treatment of last resort that indicates how oral health remains elusive for the one in five Virginians who live in an underserved area for dental care.

“The need is just immense,” said Terry Dickinson, executive director of the Virginia Dental Association, a nonprofit organization that sponsors Mission of Mercy projects across the state.

Now in its sixth year, the annual Roanoke free clinic has provided an estimated $4 million in dental services to more than 5,000 adults.

Knowing that the clinic usually reaches capacity and turns away latecomers, Witcher was in line by 1 a.m. Friday, after driving up from her Martinsville home.

She had an advance ticket handed out the week before but wasn’t taking chances.

“I’m in pain every day,” Witcher said.

For the unemployed and those working part-time or low-level jobs, dental insurance is hard to find in Virginia. Children in indigent families are covered by Medicaid, the government insurance program. Because there are few options for adults, the Mission of Mercy requires that patients be 18 years or older.

A proposed expansion of Medicaid, currently under consideration in Virginia, would offer only limited dental care for adults.

So regardless of whether the program is expanded, as called for by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, clinic organizers suspect next year that they will still be seeing lots of people like Sandra Hinkson of Roanoke.

Hinkson, 51, had eight teeth pulled at last year’s clinic. She hasn’t had much reason to smile since then.

“My friends said I turned into a surly person because I didn’t want to smile,” Hinkson said.

But as she sat in a dental chair Friday morning, Hinkson was almost giddy at the thought of getting dentures.

Her new look comes just in time for a trip to the West Coast, where Hinkson’s son, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, is stationed. Hinkson will meet her daughter-in-law and yet-to-be-born grandchild for the first time, something she did not want to do in her current condition.

“You just don’t understand what it’s like to be able to smile again,” she said.

More than 500 volunteers, including about 70 dentists from Roanoke to Richmond, were helping out at this weekend’s clinic. Others included dental hygienists and assistants, students at Virginia Western Community College and Virginia Commonwealth University, and members of the public.

One of the volunteers today will be 25-year-old Maeghan Bentley, a Roanoke mother of four who was at the free clinic on Friday to have two teeth extracted.

“If they’re willing to do something for me, I’m willing to help out,” Bentley said. “If I’m still in pain from having my teeth pulled, I can just grin and bear it.”

Also on Friday, a similar but unconnected event in the New River Valley treated about 200 people in 18 dental offices.

For all of the patients, it was a Friday the 13th that was anything but unlucky.

“Normally, I do not want to go to the dentist,” Hinkson said. “But the people here are so gentle and so kind, I don’t have a problem with the dentist anymore.”

“It’s incredible,” she said of the charitable event. “It’s God at work.”

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