Enter The Dental Ninja....

My blog has gone the way of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Pink Flloyd, Led Zepplin, Guns 'n Roses, and the Smashing Pumpkins. It has split up.

The topics "Dentistry" and "Ninjutsu" decided they'd be better of forming their own blog, leaving this site to "journal," "movies," "politics," and "random." Mostly random.

Why? They say that in order to write a quality blog you need to picture your readers and focus on them. I found myself going back and forth between addressing two groups of readers: those who care what I do on my vacation and those who don't.

Enter The Dental Ninja. This blog will contain very little details of my personal life but will be a repository of the more amusing side of dentistry, mostly from the news. In fact, you should go there now to read the interesting account of a 3-year-old who injured 7 teeth in a failed attempt to get out of a cage. Gad Zooks!

PS, which entry page do you like more?

It could be worse

There's a book up for auction this week. It was written in 1770 by Thomas Berdmore. Never heard of him? He was the dentist to King George III. This is likely the first ever English textbook on dentistry. Personally, I find Berdmore's insights to be priceless! Here's a few gems, from this article:

He writes of a 23-year-old woman left in a “terrible state” by a “barber dentist”.

“She went to a barber dentist to have the leftmolaris tooth of the upper jaw on the right side taken out,” he says.

“On second attempt he brought away the affected tooth together with a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighbouring molars.”

He says the “barber dentist” embarked on the ill-fated extraction because he was “uneasy at disappointment”.

Ha ha! I would also consider myself "uneasy at disappointment" but I'd like to think I'll stop before ripping out half of your maxilla!

Berdmore also possessed a rudimentary understanding of orthodontics, instructing fellow dentists (and barber-dentists) to "Pass gold wire from the neighbouring teeth on either side in such a manner as to press upon what stands out of the line." Either that, or you could try to “break the teeth into order by means of a strong pair of crooked pliers”.

He also observed that sugar and smoking were harmful, and that for this reason peasants suffered less dental disease than their noble counterparts.

Anyway, I just wanted to pass this along as a reminder that dentistry has come a long way and you really don't have a lot to be afraid of (relatively speaking).

Loma Linda School of Dentistry Skits and Videos

Last weekend was the annual pine springs ranch retreat. The highlight of the weekend is always the skit competition, which we take pretty seriously. Last year, my class totally blew away the competition with this parody of the hit TV show "The Office".

This year my classmates produced the sequel, but the other classes upped their game and we ended up taking third place. Here's our entry: (I'm in the bottom right corner of the screen from 6:35-6:38)

Here's the second place entry from the D2 class. If you've never seen the Blue Oyster Cult SNL skit ("I gotta have move cowbell!"), watch it here first. Then you'll better appreciate this:

In first place was the D3 class with their version of Top Gun. Pretty freakin' hilarious:

Halloween candy buy-back

I just read this article about a dentist in Georgia who will be "buying back" Halloween candy for $1 per pound, and then giving that candy to a charitable organization who sends it in care packages to our troops overseas. To me, this is win-win-win. Kids get less cavities/tummyaches/childhood diabetes, dentist gets publicity, troops get hard-to-find American candy. The program is expanding and more and more dentists are getting involved. I'm going to look into it next Halloween.

New hope for dental anxiety

I just read this article about a device developed by a dentist in Cedar Falls. Basically, the patient puts in some headphones and listens to soothing sounds (beach, forest, etc.). The device they ever-so-cleverly dubbed the "b-Calm" is supposed to "blend the frequency of the dental drill with recordings of nature sounds." I dunno, do you think it's worth a try? Does the sound of the dental drill really bother any of you?

Another article I read a couple weeks ago claimed that the scent of lavender in the waiting room had a calming effect on patients waiting to receive dental care. Personally, I think if I spent my whole career smelling lavender and listening to soothing ocean noises I'd end up a bit fruity, but any current or future patients of mine are more than welcome to inhale their own lavender and listen to soothing sounds on their Ipods when I'm working.

Here's a picture of a guy who definitely had dental anxiety. It looks like he's in a ton of pain, right? Well I can assure you, he looked like that the second he knew he was going to get a shot, not when he felt the needle. I kept stopping and asking (in my very limited Spanish) if it hurt. He'd look at me and say no, it was fine, but then go back to gripping the seat and closing his eyes really tightly as though I was torturing him. Poor guy.

One way to keep patients in line

Here's a story of a German dentist who decided to take matters into his own hands when his patient decided not to pay for her work. (This guy is what the locals would call "verrückt").
Basically, the lady's insurance wouldn't pay for two bridges and she decided it wasn't her obligation to pay for them. The Zahnartzt from Neu Ulm (I think I rode a train through there once) then breaks into her home, ties her to a chair, and reclaims the bridges.
From the article:

"The dentist is being investigated for assault for the way he forced open her mouth, and theft for taking the bridges," said Christian Owsinski a police spokesman.

Personally, I think the theft charges should be dropped. Think about it - he payed a lab fee to have the bridges made so if they belong to anybody then they are his, so this might be more of an OJ Simpson-forcefully-reclaiming-my-stuff type situation.

I do feel that he should lose his license. You simply can't perform a dental procedure (such as removing a bridge) against the patient's will. That's one of the least ethical things a dentist can do.

The creepiest part? According to the victim, he did all of this without even saying a word.

The Clinic

The season premiere of The Office is this Thursday night. I'm pretty dang looking forward to it.

If you are also a fan, might I suggest checking out this sweet video, done entirely by classmates of mine (written by this guy). It was our entry for a skit competition at the annual dental student retreat. Needless to say it was a big hit.
Without further ado, the video:

Click here for the high quality version, or watch below for the quick and dirty version (with audio delay).

My Hollywood Connection

Lakeview Terrace Trailer
Uploaded by Zelluf

Pause this video at 1:25. You see that guy with the shotgun? I gave his niece a filling yesterday. His mom (the patient's grandma) was also at the dental appointment and was all excited because she's flying to New York for the red-carpet premiere of this movie. She had fingernails about 4 inches long and it made her look like a velociraptor.

I also saw this little patient and it made my day.

Another sign of a struggling economy - falling tooth prices

At least in the UK, that is. Their current economic crisis dubbed the "credit crunch" has forced the tooth fairy to become slightly more stingy then she was six months ago. This article states that the average price of a tooth has gone from £1.22 to 87p, with 38% of Brittish children receiving absolutely nothing! 1000 parents were surveyed to find out what the tooth fairly had left their children.

Why is this? My theory is that the Tooth Fairy foolishly got locked into an adjustable rate mortgage. Think about it - the tooth fairy is always all dolled up in her fairy clothes and waving around that fancy fairy wand. Her hair and makeup is always perfect. She's obviously concerned with what others think of her and to keep up appearances she splurged on a mini-mansion she really couldn't afford. What other explanation is there? Gas prices shouldn't matter - being a fairy, she has the ability to fly. The worldwide increase in food prices? She's six inches tall, how much can she eat? Silly pretentious fairy. Now British children have less money for their Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and Fizzing Whizbees.

The silver lining? This should encourage more Brits to keep their teeth! Zing!

Fun Facts about "Laughing Gas"

Here's some stuff you probably didn't know about the "laughing gas" you get from the dentist. I just finished taking my Nitrous Oxide competency exam and decided to pass along the more interesting trivia to you folks.

• It was discovered in the late 1770's by Joseph Priestly. In 1779 Sir Humphrey Davey was the first human to inhale it and described it as "very pleasurable" and "euphoric." He was the one who coined the term laughing gas.

• It wasn't originally used in a medical setting. From 1800-1844 it was mainly used at social gatherings and sideshows for entertainment.

• In 1844 a dentist named Horace Wells was attending a demonstration. A peculiar incident happened involving a volunteer who inhaled the gas and began freaking out. (Not everybody reacts the same, and some people really don't like it.) Anyway, this guy started running around the room and gashed his leg open. Horace the dentist astutely observed that the man didn't even react to his wound - as though he didn't feel any pain. The next day Horace had his dentist buddy extracted his abscessed tooth using the gas. Horace felt no pain and proclaimed this to be "the greatest discovery ever made."

• Originally the dentists had difficulty in delivering high concentrations of the gas due to the crude delivery systems available to them. What were these delivery systems? Ox bladders. (Don't click unless you really want to see an ox bladder.)

• Wells, who is credited with the discovery of anesthesia, became addicted to the laughing gas and committed suicide at age 33.

• The exact mechanism of nitrous oxide is still unknown.
  

So there you have it. Personally, I first had laughing gas when I was 17 and absolutely loved it. I told my dentist that if I had known how great it felt, I would have stopped brushing long ago! I also distinctly remember the feeling of having the dental room rotate around me while I was getting my wisdom teeth extracted. The song on the radio was "When I fall in love" and I remember the experience every time I hear that song.

Let me know your thoughts or any funny stories involving laughing gas. Maybe next year I'll give away a free nitrous oxide treatment to the person with the best story. Maybe.

ASDA Annual Session

First off, ASDA stands for American Student Dental Association. My position within the organization is the Legislative Liaison for LLU School of Dentistry.

As mentioned in my last post, we spent most of last week in a hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. This was the second time I have participated as a delegate from my school. The way the ASDA house is run is really neat because it's a lot like the US Senate. Every dental school in the nation has two voting representatives, we use parliamentary procedure, and we basically debate about and vote on various resolutions.

This year went really smoothly with most of the voting being nearly unanimous. I made a difference by standing up and proposing an amendment to insert the word "only" into a resolution. My proposed amendment passed (wahoo!) and then the resolution barely squeaked by.

That happened to be on a somewhat insignificant resolution. The main issues we tried to address as a governing body were the perennial issues of "access to care" and "licensure reform", as well as the relatively new concern involving "mid-level providers" of dental care.

During one of the "breakout sessions" (such a misleading name) one of the students asked a lobbyist for the ADA, "What do we tell our classmates when they ask us why organized dentistry is important?"
He paused for a moment and then looked at us and said, "It's important so that dentistry doesn't end up like medicine. If they can look at the medical community and they see no problem, tell them it doesn't matter - but tell them to ask a pediatrician how much money they make. And it's not all about money, but you can't expect someone to go to school for 8 years and then make $70,000 per year." He went on to explain that the medical community's big mistake was dividing up their associations among the various specialties, thereby weakening their voice in DC. The dental community, on the other hand, has a pretty strong voice in DC which is definitely going to be needed in the next few years as the "mid-level provider" issue plays out.

Anyway, that sums up the business end of the trip. For the less boring, crazy family stories (or if you happen to just be an anti-dentite) check my wife's blog to see how we spent some of the other break-out sessions.

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
A couple weeks back 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 an emergency dental procedure after a fight with a stingray

Crazy as it sounds, I'm not making this up. It happened in England. Here is the full story. 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.

Google found me!

This is a milestone in the history of the benjiblog. You see, when I first began this blog I felt like I was really out there on the internet for people to find, but was disappointed when my google searches came up empty. I would copy whole paragraphs from this blog, and paste them into the google search box expecting to be the number one result. When this didn't happen I set out to figure out how google worked. Here's a summary of how google works from this source.
They use a top-secret algorithm called page-rank, which incorporates 3 key factors:

• Frequency and location of the key words for which one is searching
• How long the web page has existed
• Number of other web pages that link to the web page in question.

There you have it. I was naively expecting to be found when I had only fulfilled the first requirement. Apparently four months is enough time for google to consider me legit, and there might possibly be a few links to this page floating around out there.

Bonus - when I google "Benji Somebody Else", the first three hits are really referring to me, then there's some unrelated hits, then it cites this blog's first post where I explained the meaning behind the address and happened to write Benji and Somebody Else in the same paragraph.
Note- In a couple weeks I'm expecting this post to be up there on the list because I keep typing Benji Somebody Else (frequency and location people, frequency and location).
Benji Somebody Else.

On a completely unrelated but nonetheless interesting note, 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.

Benji Somebody Else.

"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. Occupation, not so much.
• Also, cause of death for a suicide usually isn't categorized as "suicide" but rather a gunshot wound or a drug overdose (even if they are intentionally self-inflicted).
  
• Consensus is that 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. Think about it, if you are a health professional, you are most likely "healthy" and less likely to die of a heart attack or motorcycle accident, thus elevating the relative rate of suicide in your group. 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. In most occupations females do themselves in at a much lower rate than the males.
  
• 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.
• Other sources believe that the highest rate is by far among military personal and law enforcement.
  

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.

Incidentally, performing dentistry has actually been much more enjoyable than I had anticipated. Before beginning school I had the same thoughts that most people have when they picture themselves putting their fingers in a stranger's mouth - something along the lines of "what about people who have really nasty teeth and bad breath - would I really want to spend all day looking in those mouths? Is that really what I want to do all day every day for the rest of my working life?"

Like I said, it's really not that bad and most days is somewhat enjoyable. (note- I'm referring to the "dentistry" part of dental school and not necessarily the "school" part). Earlier this week I was working and it occurred to me that what I was doing was very similar to pottery, except that people will pay me for it. And sometimes it hurts.

Rather than constantly thinking "Ew gross, I'm working in this old guy's mouth", once I start working my focus is (literally) on a single tooth and I can forget about the rest of the person. Individual teeth rarely have the capacity to gross someone out.

I guess this concludes my suicide note. Ha!

With My Own Two Hands

A couple nights ago I stayed in the lab late to set some teeth in a denture. You may remember from my previous rant that setting teeth isn't my favorite thing to do. However, as I was working on this denture this song came up on the shuffle setting of my iPod and I got to thinking about the unique opportunity I have as a dental student.

You see, in the real world of dentistry, the dentist doesn't actually make the denture. He or she takes the impressions and sends the casts to a lab for the dentures to be made. This is much more cost effective.

Anyway, as I was skipping out on sleep to make the denture I thought about the patient I was making them for. Back when we first met I knew within a few minutes that he really messed up his life using meth, among other drugs. This wreaked havoc on his dentition, as is usually the case, and had to wear a colostomy bag for some time. Upon looking in his mouth I knew right away we would be pulling the remaining teeth and making him a denture. I wasn't too delighted about this and didn't have much pity on him because I felt he brought this all on himself.

Since then I have gotten to know this patient pretty well and realize that, although he made some serious mistakes when he was younger and more susceptible to the tugs and pulls of the world, he is now one of the most humble and caring people I know. I think when you really get to know just about anybody you understand that they are an individual with thoughts and feelings not too terribly different from your own. During our appointments this past quarter we enjoyed discussing the American Idol contestants, politics, and many other things. Also, working on him wasn't as appalling as I was expecting - he has great personal hygiene and usually smells nice.

This reassured me that I chose the right career. I really found joy in doing something for this man that he would appreciate and couldn't do for himself - incidentally those two things constitute my father's definition of a good Christmas present. This sort of gift is reflective of what our Savior did for us.

Don't get me wrong, in and of itself I don't enjoy making dentures, but it is a good opportunity to serve others.

And now, a picture of the set of dentures I made last year for the class where we learned how to make them. Yes those are my clothes in the background, no I wasn't making dentures in the nude.

The friendly side of the scalpel

As one who's been through 5 knee surgeries during my teenage years and early 20's, I appreciated the opportunity I had last Monday to experience the view from the other side of the knife. For the first time in my life, I performed a surgery.

Wait, I thought you were in dental school, you say?

Yes, I'm in dental school. After making my first set of dentures, I was required to surgically reduce the bone level on the lateral borders of the patient's maxillary tuberosities to enable a better fit for the denture. The surgery involved 2 incisions, reflecting tissue, and reducing bone with a high-speed bur and some other instruments. Afterwards I sutured him up, extracted his two front teeth, and gave him his denture.

The funny part happened when I had finished one side and it was time to start on the other. During the suturing the patient kept falling asleep and I had to keep waking him so he would open his mouth. When it was time to give him the anesthetic injection so we could work on the other side, he wouldn't wake up no matter what I did, so I decided to proceed with the injection and see what happened. Sure enough, he woke up. I feel bad because it can't be pleasant to awake with a needle in your mouth, but seriously, that was what I had to do to wake him so I could work.

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.

Whoops!

Here's an article about an oral surgery center in NY that apparently forgot about one of their patients when they were locking up for the evening. The patient woke up from surgery and was all alone in the dark, which was probably a little disconcerting. I actually thought the story was sort of amusing because obviously she was ok, although she was terrified and threw up a couple of times.