Dentist of the Back Roads

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A Bite Out of the Bayou

Dentist Gregory Folse provides dental care to underserved elderly patients in and around Lafayette, La.

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He thought, "This is really what I want to do."

"Nine hundred patients with severe gum disease or abscess. Half of my patients. I take everybody that has swelling. Everybody in pain. Everybody that's got loose teeth. And I help them as best I can. With funding. Without funding. The family pays some, the nursing homes. Sometimes no one pays. It doesn't matter. I do it."

The rewards are often intangible.

"I had a patient in a wheelchair. She had a stroke. She was so happy to get her dentures. She reached down and grabbed her purse. She reached inside. She found a piece of bread. " 'Here doc,' she said. 'Take it.' I didn't want to take her last piece of bread. No telling how long it had been at the bottom of her purse.

"We have to give out of being wealthy. She gave to me out of her poverty."

* * *

Sixty miles northwest of Lafayette, at a nursing home in Pine Prairie, Folse gets help from a young dentist, Wendy McCurdy, who heard him lecture at the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry and was intrigued by the challenges of his work. "My mother has worked with special-ed kids all my life," McCurdy says.

They set up in the beauty shop. A little sign outside the door reads: "Haircut $6, Shampoo and set $7. . . . Wash and blow dry $3."

"Come on in, Sugar Plum," Folse calls to the first patient.

A line quickly forms at the door.

He finds troubles no one else would, says Sandra Book, nursing facility administrator: "Some of these people are in pain, but they can't tell you. Without an exam, you can't tell if they have a big old ulcer in their mouth."

At a nursing facility in the town of Eunice, they are also waiting.

"Hey, Mr. Teethman!" shouts one fellow.

A woman stops Folse in the hallway. Her root tips are exposed. She wants them pulled. Another is impatiently awaiting her dentures. "My teeth. Where are they?"

On his way to his next place, Folse stops at a cemetery to visit the grave of a fragile old woman who died recently from complications of a facial abscess. She had many medical issues, but an infection in her mouth finally overran her body's defenses.

"This is an example of oral health being a matter of life and death," he says. "Over the past seven or eight years, I've seen oral health contribute to the death of at least one or two a year."

In many cases, an oral cancer proves fatal. Other times, it's pneumonia, which can be linked to bacteria in the mouth. "I see pneumonia patients all the time. I know oral health, and oral hygiene is a significant factor in that disease," Folse says.

* * *

He's driving past fields of sugar cane and scrub woods to deliver a pair of dentures to a retired retail clerk in St. Martinville.

Smoke from a cane field curls in the blue sky. Driving over a coulee, a drainage canal. The sun is setting. A hawk is on the wire. Driving over a black bayou with a shrimp boat.

"I can't forget to stop at the lab to get that repair," he says.

Over the Vermillion River, the sky is changing from blue to black. There is a line of dark clouds on the horizon over the rice fields.

In Abbeville, Elaine Sherman is feeling better now that her dentures have been adjusted. She and her husband fished today.

"I have gumbo and crawfish ¿touff¿e and fried garfish balls," she says. "Homemade bread and pecan pie."

He stays for dinner.