Dana L. Yeoman, DDS

Dentures and Implants

The Power of a Smile to Transcend Borders Part 11

In visiting the Ukraine, I found myself a participant in an Idyll, where a darling boy named Daniel could communicate with wild beasts of nature.  The snarling, cranky critter, otherwise known as a Yozhik, was lulled into a calm as Daniel caressed him with magic hands.  I half expected the world to watercolor itself into Disney animation before my very eyes.

Sweet little “shnuffling” noises came from Yozhik for a minute or two as he assessed his gentle friend.  His expressive nose took in his environment and his little paws stepped delicately on Daniel’s open palms and forearms.  

Making his decision, the Yozhik suddenly bit Daniel hard on the finger.  We all jumped as Daniel yelled, shaking his hand with a hedgehog firmly attached to it.  The growling started again, the prickles were back up, and the magical moment was broken.  We cracked up laughing as the boy rubbed his sore finger.  Daniel turned out to be a normal ten year old boy like any other.

They say that European hedgehogs, or Yozhiks in Russian, make good pets as long as you can get past the fact they are armed and dangerous.  Hedgehogs are covered in sharp quills that make predators think twice about eating one.  Even so, they can be placated with a dish of cream and bribed to hang around the house with tasty treats.  If they trust you, they will let you touch their soft underbelly which is a stark contrast to the business-like quills on their back.  This Yozhik, however, was catch and release.  After we got our curiosity’s fill, we wrapped him back up in Sergei’s sweatshirt (to avoid being prickled like a pin cushion) and let him go back to his home in the woods.

Come to think of it, the hedgehog is a lot like his Ukrainian compatriots... prickly until you earn their trust.  Once you get past their defensive exterior, they are warm and accepting on the inside.  This is even more true when dealing with orphans.  They have a thicker layer of prickles to get through, particularly because they have lost the people they trusted, more often through drug/alcohol abuse, neglect, and abandonment than from death.  Breaking through their defense system was exhausting work.

At one point we stayed a week at an orphanage that had 33 children between the ages of 4 and 15.  These particular orphans had been found surviving alone on the streets of the city.  Some were willing to be friendly with us, but  most of the orphans were surprisingly protective for such a young age.  

For example, four year old Katya was simply darling.  Try as we might to get her photograph, we generally ended up with pictures of the back of her head as she angrily ran away, spewing words that didn’t take a translator to guess the meaning.  For someone so young, she had already developed an anger and a toughness that protected her from being cute, coddled and vulnerable.  She had obviously seen some very ugly things in the world outside the orphanage.

Andrei was another story, at fourteen he lived on the boy’s side of this complex.  He stood out to me because he was so antisocial.  He sulked in the corners of rooms, spending a good deal of time alone.  When asked to tell us his name, his face turned black as thunderclouds.  Andrei would run away in tears of anger whenever singled out in a group.  He struck me as having deeper problems than the typical American teenage angst.  Having no direct communication available, it was hard to break into his world.  I know that several times one of the guys on my team would sit quietly with him in his room after Andrei had run there to hide.  I guess there is nothing that can be done sometimes but sit with someone while they cry.

For someone with huge language, social, and psychological barriers, I was surprised at how I could crack the mystery of Andrei’s trauma from my dental chair.

4 year old Katya and the Yozhik had a lot in common.