When the Pain is Unbareable

Last week a patient sent me one of their employees who was in agony. He had had a toothache for two days and was directed to my office.

I was able to get him an immediate appointment with an oral surgeon to have his tooth extracted. While Donna was on the phone with the surgeon, I saw how much pain the young man was in and offered him Novocain to immediately stop the pain. and of course, he accepted.

The young man was put on the phone to speak with the surgeon's office and when he hung up, he told us that he could not keep the appointment because he had no money and no credit card. He left our office before we could tell him that my staff made an 'Executive Decision" that WE would pay for him to have his tooth extracted. Unfortunately, he did not have a cell phone and we could not reach him to tell him to go to the surgeon's office for treatment.

I don't care about what someone's political or philosophical beliefs are about poor people but when someone is standing in front of you IN AGONY, it is hard not to want to help another human being.

[Aside: You might be thinking, "But your office does not accept Medicaid." Correct and I never will. The ONLY people that bear the burden of Medicaid are physicians and dentists. Their reimbursement will not even pay the hourly wage of a top notch assistant."]

There has to be a better way to care for those that cannot care for themselves. The inability to solve this problem speaks more about who WE are than about those who are helpless.

What would you do with another human being with intense pain standing before you?

Mick Jagger Told Us 50 Years Ago

"You can't always get what you want but if you try real hard, you will get what you need." So goes the song.

Maybe it is me..........People are becoming more unreasonable all the time.

I tell my new patients (my long term patients already know) that I believe that I am a very good dentist BUT I cannot change:

1. The laws of physics
2. The rules of biology
3. Your DNA

When a patient presents with a problem and I provide the options for treatment, it is often unreasonable for a patient to say that they don't like their options. Frequently, when I tell a patient who has been in pain that they have two options for eliminating the pain. They can have the tooth removed or have root canal therapy. Sometimes a patient will say, "I don't want either option."

Kindly refer to rules 1 through  3 above.

I cannot change your options nor can any other dentist.

Period...NO EXCEPTION.

I know that this is America in the year 2016 but 50 years later, "You STILL can't get what you want."

Find good people to take care of you and let them do what they do to take care of you.

The Young Guy

A young man in his 20s presented  to my office with a fractured edge on his upper left front tooth.  The tooth had been previously bonded in the Midwest but the young man would not let the dentist remove part of a lower tooth that was sticking up higher than any other lower tooth and was responsible for chipping the tooth in the first place.

I had read the previous dentist's notes and he noted that he refused to let him adjust the lower tooth which is commonly done.

I informed the young man that in High School he was taught a principle in his physics course:

"Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time." Most of us intuitively know this to be true but some just do not believe it...

Trust me: It is 100% TRUE.

I gave the young man two options:

1. Shorten the lower front tooth
                        or
2. Have Invisilign treatment (Clear othodontistics) to realign the lower teeth...

The patient informed me that he didn't want his lower tooth touched nor did he want Invisalign.

That's nice but the patient cannot dictate treatment that is not in his best interest. Period, No exception.

The patient also said that he would never submit to treatment without having a second opinion.

Really?

So if a patient goes to the BEST dentist in the world but does not like his options, he   believes that it would be ok to get a second opinion from a dentist ranked  2000 in the world??

REALLY????????????

It is absolutely necessary to go to the best clinicians in the world and then listen to their advice.


Yes ,  Really.

Remembering Back

When I was a sophomore in dental school, a local Amherst, NY  dentist in his mid to late 60s would teach clinical labs to the students. He was a crotchety old guy (Aren't most of us old guys?) who used to give 2nd year students a hard time with the projects that we needed to complete. Dr. K had probably been a dentist for 30 or  35 years and he was most proud of the fact that he had completed 450 hours of Continuing Education.This he reminded us was equivalent to having gone to dental school twice.

450 hours? Really?

I have over 6,000* hours of CE and that does not include the year that I spent in my Residency Program at the old EJ Meyer Hospital in Buffalo, NY.

Now why would a dentist take so many hours of CE???

Simple!!!

To take better care of you and your family.

Unfortunately, the majority of patients (both Medical and Dental) believe that all physicians and all dentists are the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. The best doctors are far superior to the average doctor and even the doctors know that.

Find good people to take care of you!!!!!

*Please note that NOT one of these hours was on a cruise ship or in a vacation area so that a dentist will go to the conference for an hour and take side trips for the rest of the day.

Don't Necessarily Believe the Government or the Media

The Government and the Media are telling us that the Opioid  drug problem is getting worse. I don't know whether you saw the lead story in last Sunday's New York Times but the facts are that Physicians wrote fewer prescriptions for opioids in 2013 than 2012, fewer in 2014 than 2013 and even fewer in 2015 than 2014.

That is a fact.

So what does the Government of the State of New York do????? The Governor thinks that dentists are a big part of the opioid problem but they are NOT.

ASIDE: l have written 4 prescriptions for pain medication in THREE YEARS.

The Governor next demands that all prescriptions be "written " online. Now I do not have a philosophical problem with this except:

It takes  45 SECONDS to  write a prescription on paper and 20 MINUTES to do the same online.

I am kidding right????

Nope. 20 minutes.

Unfortunately,government does very few things well. Think THREE HOURS to get through a TSA security line.

When our government can have me write a prescription online in 45 seconds then and only then should they be in the business of regulating prescriptions.

Think I am angry? You Bet!

The Economy is Reasonable

How can I say this?  Is this a political statement?

When Susan and I started going to Charlotte,NC, we were in the midst of  the Great Recession  in 2010. Charlotte had been on the top of everyone's "One of the fastest growing Cities in America" during most of the first decade of the new century. The City had many skyscrapers for both business and residential uses. The Recession brought ALL construction to a halt and several of the building projects  came to a halt  and some even went bankrupt.

We spent Memorial Weekend in Charlotte this year and I can count at least 10 building cranes in the downtown area  building new skyscrapers in various stages of construction. And Charlotte is back in the "Top 10 fastest growing Cities List."

Again...Don't listen to the politicians...Count the building cranes...Look at the restaurants or see how many people will be watching the CocaCola 600 just outside of Charlotte.

Do you want to look at a glass a quarter empty or 3/4 full?

Or look at your retirement statement today compared with what it was in 20008.

When Was the Last Time America Was Great?

Politicians are telling us that America is no longer great and if elected they will make America great again.

My question is when was the last time America was great?
1. After the Civil War?
2. After winning World War One?
3. After winning World War Two?
4. During the 1950s when soldiers could go to college on the GI Bill and America became a manufacturing powerhouse and the American worker had Union Representation and high wages?
5. During the fight for Civil Rights in the 1960s?
6. When many  in the Middle Class could buy a house and send their kids to college?
7. When we helped bring down The Wall in Berlin and the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Don't listen to the politicians, America has always been great and will continue to be so. As always , politicians are lying to us for their own political gain.

America is great...

Say it a few times.

Today is a Milestone

Today I begin my 40th year as a dentist. What separates me from other dentists who have practiced 40 or more years are:
1. I am one o f the few full time, five day a week dentists practicing at 40 years
2. I am still at the top of my clinical skills  and am doing my best clinical dentistry this long into my career.
3. I still LOVE doing clinical dentistry and taking care of my patients.

Which one on the list is the most important?

I really can't tell  you but from a patient's perspective, I would think that excellent clinical skills of a surgeon or dentist at any age would be the most significant.

How long will I continue to practice?

The goal is 5-7 years.

If you are thinking about having significant dental treatment, don't wait for the last few months of my career. lol

Why 2?

Alabama (2)
Boston (2)
Los Angeles
Manchester, VA
Florida (3)
Princeton, NJ
Manhattan
Greenwich, CT
South Carolina
Venezuela

These are the places that people have travelled from to have dental care in our office in the last two months.

WHY???

Trust

Patients trust that our office will take care of them and that we will put their best interest ahead of our own financial interest. This is hard to believe, but true.

Perhaps it is also a statement of how people feel about those in the health care industry.... a total lack of trust.

How sad.

Redundancy and Duplication

Every day we receive requests for donations from organizations that protect animals. The ASPCA, The Humane Society and the Ethical Treatment of Animals are all examples of groups involved in caring for animals and we make contributions to most of them. The problem is that we have too many groups involved in solving the same problem: saving animals. Each of these groups has a well paid director and a fairly large administrative staff which does little to save animals.

We deal with illness and diseases in the same way. There are probably 10 organizations involved in treating, curing or preventing cancer and almost 50 YEARS after President Richard Nixon declared 'War on Cancer,' we are still a long way off from effectively treating or curing cancer.

Do you want MY take on our inability to make significant advances in many of the major issues of our time?

Redundancy  and Duplication.

You may have scientists from Sloan Kettering, MD Anderson, MIT, Johns Hopkins and Rockefeller University all working on the exact same gene problem and after 5 years they all reach the same conclusion that they have run into a dead end in their research. Too many scientists working on the same problem without collaboration. Wasted brainpower, wasted money and lost time.

How do we solve this problem?

Franklin Roosevelt created the Manhattan Project to help end World War II. He directed our top scientists to join together in Los Alamos, New Mexico to collaborate to find a way to build the atomic bomb, something that had never been done before. We know how successful that approach was and we need to approach problems of our time in the same manner. If you want to cure cancer, build a cancer research center, hire the top 250 cancer researchers in  the country (or world), give them $10 Billion and let them work together to find our solution.

Capitalism is a system that is built on competition between individuals, groups or nations and it is a system that has made our country the most successful in the history of the world. However, for some problems, collaboration and not  competition is a better answer.

Think about this.