The Dental Ninja vs Santa Claus

Last week I met a new patient who, as it turns out, was actually a very familiar old friend. Upon meeting him I discovered he was a nice jolly elderly man with a long white beard. A younger dental ninja would have recognized him immediately, his street clothing notwithstanding.  Yet in my present condition as a grown-up, I didn't realize who he was until he informed me that he would be seeing many children at the mall during the next few weeks and that he didn't want a toothache to keep him from this vital task.

While waiting for Santa to get numb, I made casual conversation and mentioned how excited my sons would be to hear that not only did I see him, but I actually fixed his tooth! Also, it wouldn't hurt to name-drop and let it be known that our dental practice serves such high-profile clientele.

Once Kris Kringle was good and numb I got to work removing the root of his mandibular canine. The adjacent teeth had enough gum disease that I thought it wise to attempt the extraction without elevating (using the other teeth for leverage). My plan worked beautifully except for one small hiccup - I had such a firm grip on the forceps that once the root was sufficiently "loose" it slipped out of the forceps, came flying out of his mouth, and ricocheted off my chest and leg before coming to rest on the floor!

The good news was that I had removed Santa's tooth, and he was on his way to a speedy recovery and a holiday season free of dental pain. The bad news was that I now found myself sitting there with Santa's blood on my light blue scrubs, and I still had a few more patients that day (including some little kids).  Luckily the extraction happened so quickly that I had plenty of time to go home and change.

On the way home I couldn't help but feel like the worst super-villain around. Think about it, if you saw some guy walking around with a bloody shirt you would wonder, but if you knew that the blood belonged to St. Nicholas? Yeah, pure evil.  Thus is the plight of the dentist - willfully enduring the label of the bad guy when his only intention is to help others.  When you get your Christmas presents on time this year, along with Santa Claus, you can thank your dental ninja. 


PS, I realize that by naming Santa Claus in this post I am in clear violation of HIPPA, so Santa, if you're reading this, all I want this year is for you to not sue me for sharing your private health information.  Well, that and a Red Ryder BB gun.

MC Mong's Dental Draft Dodging

We all know and love hip-hop star MC Mong, right?

Ok, for those of us who live outside of Korea, he's like their Justin Timberlake - known for his comic disposition and upbeat songs.  MC Mong's real name is Shin Dong-hyun, which begs the question, with a name like Dong-hyun, why would you even need to come up with a stage name?

Anyhoo, the reason he showed up on my radar is that he got himself into a little trouble.  He recently had three healthy teeth extracted in order to physically disqualify himself from Korea's mandatory two-year military requirement that all able-bodied males must fulfill. 

The news stories (AP and Korea Times) don't specifically mention a dentist being involved, but both use terminology along the lines of "had healthy teeth extracted" rather than "pulled his own teeth".  I don't have enough information to form a strong opinion regarding the dentist, but at the very least this brings up some serious ethical questions regarding non-maleficence vs. patient autonomy. 

Do People Trust Dentists?

Being the dental ninja, I keep a close eye on any news stories relevant to dentistry.  Some of the more interesting or amusing  stories I pass along to you, the reader.  However, there are many news items I pass over simply because they are frustrating for me as a dental professional.  These stories usually involve my colleagues who break and abuse the trust their patients have given them.

Take this pervert or this cheapskate, for example.  It seems like once or twice each month another dentist is getting our profession the wrong kind of publicity.  Occasionally I skim through the comments posted online in reaction to these stories.  A few that stick out to me are one man claiming dentists are no better than used car salesmen and that money is the only topic discussed in continuing education meetings.  Other comments have offered dental advice, claiming that if a tooth needs a root canal you might as well pull it because those never work!  After reading enough of these you'd get the feeling that the public doesn't trust dentists as much as they used to.

Today I found a bit of reassuring news from the Baltimore Sun citing a poll done by Angie's List - a website that compiles consumer reviews of service companies. The poll showed that 80% of responders had a high level of trust in their dentists.  Also interesting was that 25% admitted they don't follow their dentists directions and 30% admitted to lying to their dentist.  (Guess what?  We know.)

While 80% is not as high as I'd like to see, it's not too shabby, especially if you consider the segment of the population who don't trust anyone!

Dental Dreaming

Since beginning dental school, I've had several dreams that involve my teeth. Several times I've dreamed that my teeth were cracking and falling apart. In talking with my classmates I've learned that I'm not the only one who has had this dream.

Last night was perhaps my most bizarre dental dream yet. I was looking in the mirror and examining my teeth, each one of which happened to be about the size of golf ball! This was actually completely normal for some reason. What wasn't normal was the awful condition of my pearly whites. I was so embarrassed because I clearly had several cavities. These were no ordinary cavities, mind you. I was able to fit the tip of my pinkie finger inside some of them. Also, the holes weren't all gunky and soft like decayed tooth structure normally appears. On the contrary, my cavities were well defined, giving my teeth a sort of swiss-cheese appearance. I remember two things really concerning me:

1. I knew it would take a very large amount of composite filling material to fix my smile- at least 20 cartridges per tooth. I was worried about the amount of polymerization shrinkage and the associated post-op sensitivity and risk for fracture. (That's right, I'm even a nerd in my own dreams).

2. I was worried about what would happen a few months from now when I show up as the new dentist in town with holes all through my teeth. Way to make a good first impression, Doctor.

Needless to say, I was relieved when I woke up to find I had my normal-sized healthy teeth back. I'd like to hear if any of the Dental Ninja readers have ever had a bizarre tooth-related dream. If so, please leave a comment.

Tales from the clinic floor

Today was rough. Next time you have a dental appointment and maybe you're not really looking forward to it, just think to yourself, "at least it's not an 8-hour appointment."

That's right, today's patient drives from far away so to keep his trips back and forth to a minimum (insert token gas-prices complaint here) we decided it would be a good idea to book him for my morning and afternoon sessions. I prepped three teeth for crowns and tried (and failed) to have that be my bridge competency required for graduation. When attempting a competency, I do all the steps without help and then have two faculty members grade my work. Things kept going wrong and I seriously think I made about 20 temporary crowns before I had three that worked and I was happy with. Ugh.

Anyway, since I'm on the topic of dentistry, here's three amusing stories that happened to me lately:

Sidewalk
A couple weeks back I was getting ready to place a space-maintainer in the mouth of a really curious seven-year-old. He had been asking questions all along and I was happy to answer them, but he really threw me for a loop when he asked why I was going to put sidewalk in his mouth. Sidewalk? I was so confused - then I remembered that I had told him the next step was to "cement" the space maintainer onto his molar. It's funny how kids think sometimes.

Ipod
Recently we had mock-board exams and were required to find a patient had a specific type of cavity - a class II lesion if you were wondering. The week before the exam I was doing a pediatric rotation and came across a 13-year old with the perfect class II lesion. I convinced her and her mom to help me out but was a little concerned about whether the patient's attention span could last the whole 4-hour exam, so I told her I'd bring my video Ipod and she could watch stuff while I worked.
When exam time came I had her take a seat while I finished setting up and she started watching the Andy Milonakis Show and some stand-up comedy. The resulting scene was pretty funny - to appreciate it you have to picture the tense exam atmosphere with 100 dental chairs and hardly anybody talking. Except for a few dental drills whistling in the distance, everything is silent. Then you have this loud teenage girly giggling happening like clockwork every 20 seconds coming from cubicle 74. Soon people started turning their heads trying to figure out what was going on. All I could do was shrug my shoulders and say, "Hey, I'm that good."

What's that smell?
Working on a crown competency last week, I determined that I needed to do a minor electro-surgery on the patient's gums. To do this, there's a machine you plug in and have the patient hold a metal plate, and when the end of the handpiece makes contact with the tissue it completes the circuit and basically fries the tissue. (Keep in mind the patient is numb so it's really not that bad). After doing this for a minute I explained to the patient (who grew up in El Salvador) that I was using the high volume suction so that it didn't stink. Having already caught a whiff of his own crispy gums, he smiled and told me he thought it smelled like carne asada. I told him it sort of was.

Sorry this post was all words and no pictures! I never read posts like that. Here's a totally awesome picture to try to get you to read:


(click for the bigger, more awesome version)

Ants

I had ants crawling on my ears today. I have no idea how this happened. Around 9:00 this moring I'm sitting there doing dentistry and feel one crawling on my ear. I took off my glove and brushed it away, only to have the same thing happen 10 minutes later. Then around 3:00 this afternoon it happened again! I was in the middle of polishing up a filling I had just placed and really didn't want to take time out of the procedure to take off my gloves, brush the ant away, and re-glove; and I definitely didn't want to touch my own ear with slobbery gloves, (gross!) so I just kept working while the little bugger crawled around for two minutes and bit me three times. I don't think I've ever been so angry at a single ant in my entire life. Maybe someday when I'm working in my own office and have an assistant, I can simply call out "Ant" and she can brush it off of my ear. Someday.

Busting a myth that's been bugging me

Maybe you've heard this before, maybe not, but the myth I'm addressing is this: Dentists have the highest rate of suicide.



This has been brought to my attention a few times since becoming a dental student. It's usually somebody trying to make smalltalk, but many who've brought it up have done so in a way that led me to believe that they really think it's true.

So, I set out to do some investigating today. I had intentions of writing this post with well-referenced credible links but didn't actually find any official list. Upon typing dentists and suicide in the good old google, I found no references to support this claim, although I did learn quite a bit. Here's the summary of today's web surfing:

• The topic is somewhat unclear because suicides usually aren't classified by profession. There is a plethora of data regarding race, age, and gender because those things show up on death certificates and can easily be compiled.
  
• The rate for health care professionals as a whole is elevated.
  
• A possible explanation of this is that health care professionals generally live healthier lifestyles and are less likely to die from other causes.
• Another explanation could be the stress that comes with being a "professional".
  
• Medical Doctors (MD's) have a higher rate of suicide than their Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) counterparts. Most sources credit white male physicians as having the highest suicide rate, although the females in the profession aren't far behind - which is unusual.
  
• Psychiatrists also have a higher rate of suicide than dentists, although they have their own urban legend to deal with regarding their "highest suicide rate".
• One study had sheepherders and wool workers topping the list.
  

So there you have it. Don't believe this when you hear it unless they have a source more credible than Benji's Blog©. If they do, please send it my way.


I guess this concludes my suicide note. Ha!

Another small plus to a career in dentistry

I used to wonder what would happen if I had allergies while I was working as a dentist - after all, how would you feel if your dentist kept sneezing while working on you? Well, yesterday and today I had the chance to find out. Something's in the air down here and I've been sniffling and sneezing like crazy - except while I'm working on the clinic! Apparently the mask filters out all the pollen or whatever is aggravating my allergies so I have 100% relief while I'm working. How neat.