I'm a genius (at least in my sleep)

Ever have a great idea in your dream? Last night I came up with a winner. This dream was influenced by the fact that I have been swimming a TON lately, as well as the fact that I'm nearing the end of my 21 years of formal education and getting ready to settle down somewhere and eventually build a home.

So there I was, in dreamland, in my future bedroom. It was like my current bedroom in that Melissa and I had separate closets. Unlike my current room, it was very large and the closets went back about 30 feet (lucky Melissa, right?). In between the closet doors was a really big drawer. I pulled on the handle and found a swimming pool. That's right, a pool. The drawer just kept coming further and further out the more I pulled and eventually made it to the opposite wall. When fully extended, it made for a nice lap pool. I could hop in and swim right through the wall and into the far end of the closet. My future dream house (pun) had a secret pool in the bedroom! This may be the best idea I've ever had!

When I woke up I immediately started thinking about it and came up with two obstacles (I'm sure there are many more).
1- the sheer weight of the pool would prevent my simply pulling the drawer open. Solution- some sort of machine to do it for me, like a garage door opener but somehow cleverly blended into the room design.
2- in theory, when the drawer is closed, the water would be twice as deep. As soon as I open the drawer water would spill out all over (I'm sure you've seen the science fair project where someone puts tubes in various water glasses to demonstrate water pressure - that same principle is working against me). Solution- one idea is to have some sort of cover like a tarp that seals into the edges of the drawer as it opens. It could be hidden in the wall above the drawer. Once the pool is fully extended I could remove it and begin my swim. Another idea would be just to have the volume of the extended drawer be 2x the amount of water I use. I'd probably want high walls to prevent me splashing water everywhere anyway, right?

I've probably spent too much time on this idea as it is, but when I woke up this morning I was convinced I was a genius.

So there you have it. Let me know if any of you have ever had a great dream idea and if it panned out.

Related pictures:

Facing my Fear

Ironic, isn't it? I'm a dental student who pokes needles in people's mouths on a daily basis, but one of my phobia's is giving blood. It's not the needle part - I can handle that. When I was a teenager I was having some blood drawn and watched as they did it (bad idea) and I came really really close to passing out. Things went dim and I got sweaty and they made me lay down for 20 minutes before I could drive home. I can handle other people's blood and don't mind seeing my own blood if there's a good reason for me to be bleeding, like a skateboarding wreck or something legit - but intentionally removing my blood and putting it in a bag just doesn't sit well with me. Time to face my fear.

Why am I doing this today? Yesterday was one of those news days where I found myself glued to the TV all evening. Most of you probably heard about this happening - a commuter train and a freight train collided head on in Chatsworth, which is about 15 miles northeast of Los Angeles. When I first started watching the news coverage, they said that at least 20 people were injured, and 11 of them critically. Now (the next day) the count has risen to 17 dead and 135 injured. During the live coverage there were interviews with witnesses and one of them got a little graphic - I think the network probably wishes it weren't a live feed because she really got into some gory detail. Anyway, one of the networks mentioned the need for blood donations in the L.A. area and I decided that since I didn't really have any other plans for today, we might as well make a day out of it. In fact, just the other day Melissa had mentioned that we should take a trip out to Hollywood, so I planned it all out last night and here we are, about to embark on our own little service-oriented vacation.

(more photos here)

Update: (it's evening and we're home now) The current, and likely final count is 25 dead and 135 injured (45 critical). Metrolink has already claimed responsibility saying it was the fault of their engineer and that more details will come forward in the coming days.

While we were driving to L.A. they mentioned on the radio that they were just barely accessing the lower compartment of the first passenger car. Unbelievable! This was 18 hours later. That should give you some idea of the extent of the damage.

There wasn't any media coverage there, but I'm pleased to report that the UCLA blood and platelet center was PACKED! I strolled in around 12:30 but wasn't hooked up to a blood bag until 2:10. While waiting I got to talking with a reserve firefighter who was called in to the scene last night. He told me the news didn't even come close to describing how truly horrific the scene was. He was showing me some pictures on his camera but before we got to the messy ones, my name was called to go give blood.

Anyway, I'm glad we went. We had a really fun day and spent some time walking around Hollywood. Check my wife's blog for the fun report and some family photos.

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.

Whoa

The discovery channel's presentation of what a 500 km asteroid would do to the earth, set to some Pink Floyd.

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.