Catonsville native Sheryl Syme, who was known as Sheryl Ernest when she graduated from Catonsville High School in 1984, works on some young Vietnamese patients during her trip to that country in November with Operation Smile. The international nonprofit, which was founded in 1982, marked 20 years of service to Vietnam with its 2009 visit to the country in southeast Asia. (Photo courtesy of Sheryl Syme)
While some teenagers think they know what they want to be when they grow up, Sheryl Syme really did know.
"When I was a junior in high school, I knew I was going to be a dental hygienist," said the Catonsville native.
What Syme didn't know was that her dental talents would someday carry her to a rural town near Hanoi, in Vietnam.
Syme, who grew up in Catonsville, USA, as Sheryl Ernest, lived so close to her dentist's office on Edmondson Avenue, that she'd walk there whenever she had a check up.
She said she didn't mind going to see Dr. Henry Honick.
"I just liked that atmosphere. I liked the people," she said.
After graduating from Catonsville High School in 1984 and the University of Maryland Dental School in 1988, Syme spent much of her 20 years in the dental hygiene field working at a dental office on North Rolling Road.
She completed a master's degree in community health at the University of Maryland Graduate School at Baltimore in 1993.
It was at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore, where she is now an associate professor and director of curriculum management, that she learned about Operation Smile from faculty and students who had volunteered with a non-profit organization.
Operation Smile sends medical volunteers to dozens of countries to provide surgeries to children with cleft lips and cleft palates, facial deformities that often leave the children unable to speak or eat, let alone smile or have healthy social lives.
Operation Smile, which was founded in 1982, takes a well-rounded approach to trying to treat these children, according to Scott Vooss, a spokesman.
Vooss said he wasn't sure when the organization branched out and began providing preventive dental care.
It came about after oral surgeons, plastic surgeons and other medical professionals who had gone overseas to correct cleft lips and palates found children weren't receiving even the most basic dental care.
"I think it was an issue of sort of seeing the need and trying our best to treat that need," he said.
The program in which Syme participated, called "20 Years of Smiles -- A Journey of Miracles," marked 20 years that the Vietnam branch of Operation Smile has been serving children.
From Nov. 4 to 14, Syme and about 300 medical professionals from 15 countries volunteered their medical and dental skills at 16 locations throughout Vietnam, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.
In 10 days, they provided 868 reconstructive surgeries to children and young adults, as well as more than 6,600 dental treatments, according to a statement from Operation Smile.
"Volunteerism is at the root of everything that we do here," Vooss said.
"Without volunteers we would not be able to do what we do," he said.
Syme, who is married, with a 10-year-old daughter, said she didn't mind jumping on a plane and flying thousands of miles away to offer her medical skills to others for free.
"It was a nice opportunity to reach out to an international community in need," she said.
It also offered her an opportunity to enrich her classroom instruction with real world experience.
"International dental programs are something we talk about in class," she said. "Now, having that experience myself, I can talk about it first-hand."
The Road to Thai Binh
Syme and 15 other faculty and students from the University of Maryland Dental School arrived in Hanoi without knowing where in the country they'd be working.
The group spent several days in Hanoi, shopping and attending a gala celebrating Operation Smile's 20 years operating in Vietnam.
"We did a lot of shopping in Hanoi," Syme said.
During the festivities, actor Jackie Chan and Operation Smile founders Bill and Kathy Magee were awarded the National Medal for Peace and Friendship Among Nations by the Vietnamese government.
Chan, a native of Hong Kong, is an official "Smile Ambassador."
While waiting for their assignment for Operation Smile, Syme and other volunteers enjoyed the relatively low prices for Vietnamese goods and services, such as purses, silk scarves, ties, dresses and tailoring.
"I had to buy another suitcase for all the things that I bought," she said.
The Rural Grind
Syme and a small team of dentists and hygienists, along with two dental students from University of Maryland were assigned to Thai Binh, a rural town several hours southeast of Hanoi.
Two college students from Hanoi, one of them a dental student, volunteered as interpreters for the group.
The team took two vans, each equipped with a dental chair and some basic equipment for cleaning and extracting teeth, to five elementary schools in five days.
At some schools, the dental team's arrival was a big event.
When the vans pulled into the school's courtyard, often the town's mayor and other local leaders would be there to meet them.
"The headmasters (of the schools) just really rolled out the red carpet for us," Syme said.
The team did screenings, pulled some teeth, spoke to classes of students about how to care for their teeth and performed dental care demonstrations.
"The children were just wonderful," she said.
The condition of their teeth, however, was not so wonderful.
"Every child had some kind of decay. It was just so rampant, it was incredible," Syme said.
The elementary schools were in what Syme called "really rural areas," where people don't spend much time in dentists' waiting rooms because there are none.
"They don't have dentists. They don't have dental hygienists in those areas," she said.
Some of the children didn't even own toothbrushes, Syme said.
"The toothbrushes we gave them became the family toothbrush," Syme said.
"We did the best we could," she said.
Syme said that, before the trip was over, her group in Thai Binh treated the mouths of over 800 children.
The team couldn't solve every dental problem they saw because of a lack of time and supplies.
So they focused on "trying to minimize infection.
"That's the target," Syme said. "Everything else was icing."
Syme also spoke to the teachers, as well as parents, about dental hygiene.
"The parents were surprisingly very interested," she said.
Fun Worth Having Again
This was Syme's first visit overseas, but it won't likely be her last.
"We felt good about what we did at the end of the day. Everybody said they'd definitely go back," she said. "It was a really good experience."
She said she'll miss the camaraderie of both the work days and the evenings, in which she, the other hygienist, the students, the dentists and the interpreters were always together.
"We just did everything together...we'd have these three-hour-long dinners," she said.
"It was a real close group," she said.
Syme enjoyed the food as well.
"The food was good, actually, a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit and fish," said Syme, who lives in Odenton in Anne Arundel County.
The long meals felt like a reward after long days working in the tropical heat.
"It was hot, 97, 98 degrees," Syme said.
"I actually lost a little bit of weight but ate a lot," she said.
Though Syme feels that her participation in Operation Smile Vietnam made a difference, she knows the conditions in Thai Binh and other places still need improvement.
Some of the team members, anticipating the hot and sweaty conditions, had packed the cheapest dental scrubs they could find, knowing they'd be basically unuseable afterward.
Yet when Syme's team was wrapping up its operation, they found a few clean scrubs and lab coats to give to the schools or whomever wanted them.
The Vietnamese were so eager to take them that Syme and her colleagues offered their dirty scrubs, as well.
"They were like, 'Yes, we want them'," Syme said.
"They just don't have these things," she said.
