Don’t Try This At Home
As a dentist, the easiest group of patients to work on are strangers. We might become friends along the way, but they start out as strangers. For me acquaintances represent the most challenging group because if something goes wrong, it can become awkward. Even if your dentist does everything correctly, a less than ideal outcome or an unwanted side effect can occur. Family falls somewhere in between these two categories. Treating your immediate family might be compared to being a doubles tennis partner with your spouse. Or teaching your child how to drive. Most of the time, things go smoothly.
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My husband’s tooth broke on the Tuesday after Labor Day, as I was entering my third year of dental school. I desperately needed patients and he needed a crown. Who better to get experience from than my family?
I did my first crown on him, as a student before I had a license to practice, while we were newlyweds. He didn’t complain about asking his supervisor for a half day off. Even if I didn’t have confidence in myself, he trusted me like a skydiver jumping out of an airplane.
His molar, once strong and unblemished, was now dark and ugly. It had a huge, tarnished amalgam filling that was beginning to crack. I introduced my husband to the professor, who promptly winked and then said, “So, what’s the plan for the guinea pig?”
“We were thinking a porcelain-fused to metal crown,” I said.
“Well, if it were my spouse, I would do gold. It’ll last forever.” New to dentistry and marriage, this concept of eternity didn’t resonate.
“Won’t it show when he laughs? Or yawns?” But then I reconsidered: a hint of gold showing a concealed bad boy, it could be kind of sexy.
Like demolishing an old house, first the silver filling had to be removed in its entirety. I proceeded snail-like, wanting to avoid the pulp – or nerve – at all costs. Violating the pulp would’ve meant root canal, two words I feared as much as the general public.
Filling finally out, the molar now had a crater that required reconstruction into some semblance of a tooth. “You’ll need to place a couple pins,” the professor said. I could feel my heart race and my toes sweat inside my socks. Drilling a pin meant I would have to descend even deeper into the tooth, trying to avoid the pulp that I couldn’t see. A more seasoned dentist could easily visualize exactly where the pulp lurked.
Thanks to the NASA space program, pins are now rarely used in dentistry. NASA scientists developed the silica tiles and adhesives for the shuttle and that technology has been adapted for dental use. Instead of pins, we now bond fillings into place.
I last used a pin to reattach a broken chess piece. This tiny rebar secured the queen’s head onto her formidable body, rendering her battle ready once more. For weeks I bragged about this to any patient who would listen and joked, “Consider this cross training.”
Paralyzed, drill poised, I sat staring at my husband’s tooth. Where do I drill? I went and added my name to the professor’s list. When he arrived, he said, “I’m going to do it for you – this time – but only because I hate to see couples fight.” Then he added, not unkindly, “Review the anatomy on tooth #30.”
Zip, zip, ten seconds later, he was done.
It would take me twelve hours and four appointments to finish the crown. My husband’s boss began to question whether he was really at the dentist. Later, after his jaw stopped hurting, my husband said, “I’m not sure I like the gold.”
Since that first experience, I’ve treated my immediate family, many in my extended one, and even the dog. Rather than subject Sammy to general anesthesia, I tried to clean his teeth using a topical numbing gel and his own dedicated tool. The gel tasted bitter and awful, but Sammy lapped it up like a rare treat. Fearing that he would unwittingly bite my fingers, my efforts were lackluster and ineffective. Later when Sammy needed hernia surgery, I asked the vet to “do his mouth,” and handed him the stainless steel instrument labeled “dog.” Sammy returned home with one repaired hernia and five less teeth.
After watching me dabble in animal dentistry, my son, who never had a cavity, said, “Mom, can you clean my teeth forever?” He wanted to put a dental chair in the garage of his future home so I could make house calls in my old age. I thrilled that I would still be needed. My daughter, who said to me at age four when I placed her first filling, “Ow! Mommy, you’re hurting me,” wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic.
At their grammar school, I once did a show-and-tell, bringing in peaches, smooth oranges, and expired anesthetic to demonstrate how to give an injection. I wanted to show them that getting a shot was “no big deal.” Guiding their still dimpled hands, I allowed some of the older children to try for themselves.
One third grader said afterwards, “Can we eat the oranges now?”
I also administered annual flu shots in the kitchen. When I recited our hectic schedules and pointed out my expertise at giving shots, our pediatrician agreed to provide me with a small supply. I would line up my family at home and the staff at the office and assembly line the shots, saying annoying things like, “You know, every year 50,000 Americans die from the flu.”
Most years I would do myself last. But at fifteen, what was the harm in letting my son try? He was taking AP Biology in school. Unable to watch, his sister left the room. Sounding like Dr. Flask from dental school, I told him to just “go for it.” On his first attempt, the needle bounced off me like a Lilliputian arrow off Gulliver. As my husband looked on horrified, I picked the syringe off the floor and said, “Try again, only much harder.”
To my husband I said, “What?? The floor’s clean.”
I hope I didn’t traumatize them with the shots – or with their growing stockpile of baby teeth, kept in a baggies in their respective scrap books. More than once I suggested we might make necklaces from those teeth, arranged in the same sequence as in their childhood mouths.
When I had a growth removed from inside my own mouth, it turned out to be a lipoma, a glistening yellow fat ball about the size of a matronly pearl. My oral surgeon friend put in a couple stitches, put the lipoma in a jar, and I took it home to show the kids.
“Mom, that’s gross,” my daughter said. “Throw it away.”
My son compared it to earwax.
Neither of my children showed any interest in a career in dentistry…