Dr. Oz, on learning to treat patients once you become a doctor:
When I went into medicine, I assumed, by the time I was
done with medical school, I would understand it all. We
think that if we study hard enough, we’ll understand how
the whole body works. Then you go into practice and
someone sits across from you, very sophisticated, smart
person, and they haven’t read the book you have read.
They have symptoms, and problems, and complaints that just
don’t fit what you’ve actually learned seems to be how the
body works. So you have two ways of dealing with that —
you can assume they’re crazy and ignore them, or you can
say “you know what, I think there’s something else going
on out there.” So, now, there are a lot of physicians who
seem to believe there is something to it [acupressure].
Now he pulls the needle out. Puts this thing in your
mouth.
This will suck up your face.
This dentist goes outside to laugh at you. And
you sit, grown up, intelligent human being,
arguing with this thing.
To give us a sense of treating actual patients in our preclinical prosthodontics course, we are asked to give our cases names and stories. I borrow from real life. So, my first patient’s name last semester was Chris Rupert. He needed crowns on #30, #8, and #12 due to a baseball brawl. I’m waiting back on the lab for a full gold crown on #30, a porcelain fused to metal on #12, and a full porcelain for #8. I’ve got a bunch of casts labelled “CR.”
We’re learning how to prep teeth for full gold, porcelain fused to metal, and all porcelain crowns. That is, we’re taking 60,000 RPM pneumatic dental drills fitted with diamond-studded burs and… cutting plastic teeth (funny, eh?) fitted in something called a typodont which is mounted in a very nice simulated patient (complete with cheeks, semi-realistic range of motion, etc.). Thing is, it is tricky work. The next time your dentist picks up a mirror and drill in order to place a filling in your back upper molars… be thankful they first practiced on a set of plastic teeth.
“This is a horror show we’re watching,” said Lawrence
Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a
left-of-center economic research organization in
Washington. “By every measure available-loss of
employment and hours, rise of unemployment, shrinkage of
the employment to population rate- this recession is
steeper than any recession of the last forty years,
including the harsh recession of the early 1980s.”
A little update on the status of my dental learnings is in order. We aren’t getting too hammered with courses until Histology and Gross Anatomy are added in October (then the real fun begins).
All of us D1 students have a class called “Dental Care Delivery and Oral Epidemiology” which we simply abbreviate “DCD.” Today, we took the midterm for DCD (the final is next week… huh?) There really is some valuable material in the class, especially with regard to enhancing and measuring the increase in oral health of a community. However, the structure of guest lecturers (sometimes two per session) means studying for the test is an exercise in adapting to many different styles of teaching. One particularly entertaining lecturer was a retired dentist who recently retired from teaching at the U as well. This guy is a really entertaining and unbelievably knowledgeable speaker. He has, quite literally, seen it all — he casually mentioned the characteristic signs of marijuana usage, bulimia, methamphetamine abuse, etc. Naturally, we had quite a few questions from his presentations on our midterm. My strategy for some of the questions I wasn’t quite sure of was to play clips of this fellow reading different answer options in my head. This worked sometimes, but other times all I could hear was “you bet your sweet bippy,” which was an expression he used to indicate that “you are darn right “X” is true.” It was entertaining, but not particularly useful.
We did dental indices on our peers today — so, this was the first time I have ever in my life probed around someone’s gums using actual dental instruments.
I’ve never sweat so much in my life.
By the time I was done with my rotation as examiner, my nitrile gloves were transparent from sweat. Posture, working in your mirror, keeping your hands braced on the person’s face, not blinding them with light, not poking them in their soft palate… so many things to keep in mind. And all we were doing is counting teeth and testing the health of the mouth! Drilling and filling a cavity seems a lifetime away right now. I think the hardest part is knowing what someone is comfortable with; I mean, it’s one thing to say you can (and should) brace your working hands on your patient’s face, but it’s quite another thing to physically maneuver your hands into the correct positions. I’m nervous and excited to get better at this.
I am just so unbelievably excited to own my own business fixing people’s teeth, I can barely stand it. If you’re in the Twin Cities area five years from now, and your tooth hurts, please do look me up.
Mark Friedman, DDS uses Macs to enhance his dental practice in a wide variety of ways. Apple profiled this dentist and outlines the advantages that his approach affords.
“The implications are countless,” he continues. “Say my hygienist detects a speckled white spot in a patient’s mouth during a prophylaxis. She can capture it, at differing magnification levels, right into iMovie. Then, while the patient’s still having his teeth cleaned, an assistant can share the automatically compressed video file with an oral surgeon via e-mail. iMovie also lets us export a still image that we adjust in iPhoto and send to our color photo printer. So by the time our patient leaves, we know whether the surgeon wants a biopsy now or prefers to re-check it in a week.
Nine months ago, I received some rather bad news: a rejection from the U of M School of Dentistry. Never one who enjoys having to zig when I intended to zag, I nevertheless tried to learn how to accept change. I signed off last February with a statement that seemed confident but was riddled with holes of doubt and trouble. Only work and time could resolve those issues. And today, I got some news. So… finally… years of planning, a biochemistry degree, research, summer classes, dental observations, dental conventions, a dental coop class, taking the DAT, applying, getting rejected, taking a DAT class, more observations, re-applying, and endless months of waiting for news, it is official — I start dental school next fall at the University of Minnesota!
A cornucopia of unique business cards - See anything you like, Mykala? I liked two of the dentist ones—the one with floss threaded between teeth at the bottom, and the other with an embossed impression of teeth. Fun!
I was going to think about this post for a long time, attempt to be as eloquent as possible, and then type up a long tale recounting the events that have transpired since my application to dental school. Perhaps that post will still be written, but this post is not that one. I didn’t make the cut for the University of Minnesota class of 2011 dental school. This Tuesday, the rejection notice came in the mail. No wait list for me. No dental school this September.
Interesting, this was found in Saqqara which, as ancient burial grounds go, is pretty amazing. “The step pyramid at Saqqara was designed by Imhotep for King Djoser (c.2667-2648 BC). It is the oldest complete building hewn stone complex known in history.”
I’ve started one or two journal entries here, and then immediately deleted them. I am saying the same thing over and over in a side-long and vague way that leaves me with no satisfaction. When my fingers cease flitting over the keys, the ideas are still in my head, and I’m looking at a couple of paragraphs of junk. To get in the blunt state of mind, I thought I’d list out some things about myself:
All humans are simmering pots of needs; every person you meet has a unique concoction of needs brewing. Take a baby, for instance: its needs overflow moment to moment in cascades of petulant tears. As that baby grows up, it does not stop literally crying out for things because it no longer want to, it stops because crying out no longer works, surrounded as it is in a sea of selfish people. Over the years, we learn to bottle up our needs, yet they continue to drive us from the inside out.
