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)

Puffer fish underwent emergency dental procedure

Crazy as it sounds, I'm not making this up. It happened in England. Here is the full story detailing how the fished damaged his dentition in a bout with a sting ray. It sounds like the fight busted off part of a tooth, which in and of itself would have been ok, except that puffer fish are like rats in that they need to constantly be gnawing to keep their teeth worn down. After the fight the lazy puffer fish did all his gnawing on the side with the broken tooth, allowing his other tooth to grow to the point that it started damaging his lip.

Crazy.

After the procedure the fish was relocated to Germany - I'd like to think that it was part of some sort of fish witness protection program to keep him safe from the sting rays.

Baby Epiglottis

Ever wonder how babies can drink and breath at the same time? Think about it - you can't drink and breath at the same time (try it if you don't believe me), and nursing babies don't come up for air once they "latch on".

I was studying this very concept for my board exams just over a year ago, at the same time my son was just a wee infant. The answer lies in the epiglottis. Here is an illustration of the epiglottis of an infant:
The key difference is that the shape of the baby's throat allows the epiglottis (the green shaded area) to come into contact with the soft palate (yellow), thus allowing air (shown in light blue) to enter the trachea, while milk (shown in pink) can flow around on either side.

I was recently reminded of this concept during our summer break at my parent's house when Jordan was drinking from a sippy cup and started coughing. I looked at him and asked if he got some down the wrong pipe and then realized that this had never happened to him before. I realized my little boy is growing up - his epiglottis is no longer touching his soft palate when he drinks! He'll just have to alternate between drinking and breathing just like the rest of us now. I think this is a milestone in toddlers lives that most parents are unaware of.

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.

"It's better to lose a tooth than to lose your life"

That's the quote from the brave 11-year-old Brazilian boy who recently fended off a pit bull attack by sinking his teeth into the dog's neck! How's this for irony - he broke his canine when he sank his teeth into the neck of a canine! Ha! He needed 4 stitches in his arm, and the article says he was freed when bystanders pulled the dog off of him, but I think it was actually the dog who was freed from the vicious boy. Talk about fighting fire with fire!

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.