Karen is the former Mayor of Cherokee and Chairwoman of the Great Salt Plains Health Center Board. She and husband Lon also own and run the Cherokee Inn and neighboring restaurant, Cherokee Station. We had a delicious meal at the Cherokee Station, including prime rib, which Karen and Lon raised. What else does this woman do! Oh, her father, Dr. Cole, was a dentist in OKC for many years.
The mobile dental van was in town for Friday and Saturday and we made quite a show, I think, with our big smiling winnebago, and staff and volunteers wandering around town with our logoed shirts and scrubs.
First Old Man: I feel old and tire today.
Second Old Man: Not me, I feel just like a baby.
First Old Man: How can you say that?!
Second Old Man: I don't have any hair or teeth, and I just peed my pants.
A little joke told to us by one of Cherokee's friendly senior citizens while we enjoyed our breakfast at Ms. Dottie's Diner.
Of course, there were the usual heart-breaking dental cases. One woman ran out of gas in Alva on her way to her appointment. An oil field worker picked her and her husband up off the side of the road and brought them to Cherokee. We did what we could for her, but she has a serious bone infection and needs to see an oral surgeon. Unlikely to happen since she has no money for gas to get home, or the pain pills prescribed to ease her suffering, much less for a trip to the oral surgeon. The same friendly saviour offered to take them back to their stranded car. People are just that nice in the Cherokee Strip.
Many other adults with rampant decay who haven't set foot in a dentist's office for decades. One 40-something man thought his last visit to the dentist was probably in 7th or 8th grade. Dr. Baguidy, a public health dentist working on the van for both days, likened the dental conditions of the patients to a third world country. I assured her I see the same all over the state, not just in this county.
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