TalkinTeeth

1 2 3 mike testing, dentist talking. Yep, my chair-side experiences well with-in the boundaries of the sacred dentist-patient confidentiality deal. Though, I have serious doubts whether this code is at-all applicable to us. Seriously, imagine a dark shady restaurant, a dentist sitting on one of the corner tables whispering,‘ I have information, but it will cost you. Mr X needs a root canal in his lower molar now, it is urgent, we have to do it now!’ to secret-seeker. Doesn’t make sense does it, but then do rules ever. This is me, your friendly anonymous dentist looking for humour in the everyday life and sticking to the redundant-secret-code.

[talkinteeth-blog]

Born to run and live to fly

Born to run- A beautiful book, I am told and am still in the queue to get my hands on it. A very conscious new year resolution is to to read borrowed books since last year's bought books have reported zero touchings, maybe this will erase the bad omen. Anyways before I ramble on this tempting topic of new year resolutions, failed and forgotten ones let me get back to 'born to run'. Running is in our blood but we destroy rather we contaminate that blood by doing unnatural things. Unnatural surfaces to run on, hard concrete, unnatural surfaces to run in, shoes, and unnatural injuries to live with. Now, I haven't read the book but the enthusiastic book-lender has let these slips and got my brain already jogging. Author is one of the first advocates of Vibram, minimalistic shoes or foot glove, and strongly supports the foot over the heel to touch the ground first theory. That is how we are born to run and have bodies adapted to that kind of impact not the unnatural kind which then leads to so many kinds of injuries. Unnatural is his biggest argument, and it's huge, I agree but isn't life as we see and experience today unnatural. Was man intended to get up to a blaring alarm, always craving for those five extra minutes. Isn't time unnatural... And stress the root-cause of so many injuries, permamnent and temporary. Can you erase it, both stress and injuries and can you get the time back. Wake-up when the mind and body are ready and not when the clock is. Smile for the new day, and not frown at it. Unnaturalness is not just in running it is omnipresent, each and every aspect of the life, but can we erase it. Just turn over, use the Vibram. I wish it was that easy.

[talkinteeth-blog]

Murphy or Sheldon

I am a huge fan of Big Bang Theory and in strange way I realized how huge this fan-ship-ness is. 

Finding a parking outside our hospital is always a task and it is a mammoth one when you are running late. These were the exact conditions during which Murphy entered my mind with his fit-all-situations rule. Soon I was ruminating on Murphy, who was he, where had he lived and how clumsy and idle could he have been to record the number of times his buttered-toast fell and landed  on the wrong side.He was probably an eccentric but a brilliant dude, somebody like Sheldon Cooper, maybe, no, a clumsy Sheldon; yes, a clumsy Sheldon can so fit as Murphy.

[talkinteeth-blog]

Sheer numbers!!

Pt with severe dental pain on the dental chair.

I-Have you taken anything for it?

Pt- Yes, I took paracetamol.

I- Did it help?

Pt- No, It is not working, I just took my 16th tablet, and I can still feel the pain.

I- 16th, REALLY??

Pt- Have been taking them since 3 days, but the pain is still there.

There is a reason why we count the number of the days in a prescription and not the number of tablets.

[talkinteeth-blog]

Dentistry, Recession-proof

Did you know that the dental pain is second only to labour pain in intensity and dental decay is second only to common cold in incidence. And this, my dear, is the reason why we are recession- proof.

[talkinteeth-blog]

Answer-time, wait-time

What do you do when a patient takes unusually long to answer, specially to something as trivial as his age? Daydreaming, is what I was doing.

Starting with 'why the silence' to 'is he calculating his age', to "it's taking too long, he doesn't seem that old', and finally to 'really, how can one forget his age'.

Anyways, his firm '37' woke me up from this reverie and got me thinking as to what is an average answer-time/wait-time (the time the questioner waits) for such routine questions. How long does it take for me to perceive the answer to be an instant one or a well-thought-out one.

Google took only 0.29 sec to give me around 20 pages of links (definitely instantaneous if google was the patient), and I took another 45 min to find-out that the wait-time is as little as 0.3 sec for an instant response, 0.7-1.4 sec for a well-thought-out answer and that if the patient is taking more than 3 min it's time to check his pulse.

[talkinteeth-blog]

She broke my tooth!!!

Lazy afternoon, with the post-lunch sleepy aura all around, and me contemplating a quick nap on the dental chair (Believe me, they make the most comfortable beds, memory and back- caressing and all other mattresses don’t even come close) vs. a boring article, and I hear a girl crying and see her father requesting for a consultation. ‘It’s an emergency’, he says and my front office girl gives her trained response ‘Please have a seat, while I check with the Doctor’; Pretension, I tell you. Anyways, since the doctor was super-free to see the crying 8 yr old and the business-suit clad harrowed father, we hurriedly let them in the office. The emergency- A school fight where some mean girl pinched her upper lip and broke her front tooth. I am thinking that is one hell of a pinch, with no blood, no nothing. I look, mild abrasion on the gingiva, a loose milk tooth and lots of tears and drama. ‘Nothing permanent here’, I say, but the kid just wouldn’t believe me. She stopped crying only when I showed her the undamaged, un-erupted permanent developing tooth on the X-ray.

I wonder whether it was the broken tooth or the ego!

[talkinteeth-blog]

Will it Hurt!!

The most frequent, the most redundant and the most lied to question. I have tried every possible answer from ‘No, you won’t feel a thing’, ‘Yes, just a little but it will be over soon’ to ‘Yes, of-course it will pain, it’s an extraction, what do you think (with husband the patient in this case, truth was the need of the hour) ’. There is no ideal answer that will soothe the patient’s anxiety, and every time I hear this question in my dental office I mentally cringe, then smile and put on my best chair-side manner and say ‘No, it wouldn’t hurt, actually you won’t feel a thing’.  

Anxiety and not fear is what our books call this, but sometimes I wonder in today’s world with it’s information overload, is there really ‘a fear of unknown’!