Category: Uncategorized

I am gluten free. And this didn’t come about because of some bullshit fad thing I had to try because some asshole talk show dumbass says it’s a good diet idea. No. Gluten makes me sick. How so? Think pain in my body and pain in my brain (and, surprisingly, not my gut). How long have I had this? Who knows. Probably a very long time. And it finally came to a head last year around this time (extreme pain can be such a powerful motivator). More on all that at a different time.

Bottom line: I can’t eat/drink anything containing wheat, barley, and rye. Everything I miss eating/drinking will be a conversation for another day. BUT, I most miss bread. And I used to make a lot of bread. In fact, one of the pick-up lines I used on my now wife was “I have a bread maker”. AND, my first all day date with my now wife started with a fresh loaf of bread that I baked (with my bread maker). So not having good bread was a huge loss for me. However, through some experimentation I developed a basic gluten free bread recipe that I find is awesome for my needs and palate (think beautiful comfy aroma filling the house as it bakes followed by a wonderful yeasty real bread taste and texture). Udi’s gluten free bread…sucks (barf)!!! So here’s my basic gluten free bread recipe:

**Basic Gluten Free Power Bread (This is a no-knead dutch oven recipe. This is also a good all purpose loaf that can be embellished with nuts, raisins, protein powders, etc.)**

-One cup Bob’s Red Mill GF (gluten free) Oat Flour

-One cup Bob’s Red Mill GF All Purpose Flour

-One cup Kodiak Cakes GF Pancake\Baking Mix (available on Amazon)

-1/2 cup GF Almond Flour

-1/2 cup GF Sorghum Flour

-Two tsps regular (not quick rise) yeast

-Two tsps salt

-2.5 tsps Bob’s Red Mill GF Xanthan Gum

-Two tsps Bob’s Red Mill GF Psyllium Powder

-Two Tbs brown sugar

-Two cups luke warm water

-1 tsp baking powder (optional)

-1/2 tsp baking soda (optional)

1. Mix/whisk all dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.

2. Add water to the dry ingredients and mix (with a big spoon) until all the dry ingredients are thoroughly wetted and you have a rustic looking sticky ball of dough (the more rustic looking the better). Dough can be transferred onto a piece of parchment paper inside another large mixing bowl if desired (my preferred method).

3. Let the dough “rise” in its mixing bowl (it doesn’t really rise much at all) for at least three hours. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap as the bread dough will dry out easily. Poke several air holes in the plastic wrap. Proof the dough in a warm environment (bread proof mode in an oven is great). DO NOT KNEAD THE DOUGH.

4. Preheat oven and a dutch oven to 400 degrees. Really allow the dutch oven adequate time to get REALLY hot.

5. Remove the REALLY hot dutch oven from the oven, place the dutch oven on a heat resistant surface, and transfer the dough into the dutch oven. The bread can be baked directly on the parchment paper in the dutch oven (my preferred method).

6. Bake for 45 minutes at 400 degrees with the dutch oven lid on.

7. Remove the dutch oven lid and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

8. Let the bread cool a little and then (hopefully) enjoy.

Panic attacks suck. Worse, they are very real. And we aren’t entirely sure what causes panic attacks. Trauma, genetics, stress, helplessness, hopelessness, fear? Perhaps certain individuals may even be predisposed to their effects? Yes to all of those. Debilitating? You bet your ass. How do I know this? I’ve seen their effects first hand. Even more…I suffer from them (and this isn’t easy for me to talk about but I feel I should talk about it). I will say as much as I am able to say right now but know this: as dentists MANY of our patients become panicky when even thinking about dental treatment and that can be a HUGE barrier to good dental care (more on that at a different time).

What is a panic attack? The Mayo Clinic describes a panic attack as “a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think you’re losing control, having a heart attack or even dying“. Further, the Mayo Clinic states: “[p]anic attacks typically begin suddenly, without warning. They can strike at any time — when you’re driving a car, at the mall, sound asleep or in the middle of a business meeting. You may have occasional panic attacks, or they may occur frequently. Panic attacks have many variations, but symptoms usually peak within minutes. You may feel fatigued and worn out after a panic attack subsides. Panic attacks typically include some of these signs or symptoms: [s]ense of impending doom or danger; [f]ear of loss of control or death; [r]apid, pounding heart rate; [s]weating; [t]rembling or shaking; [s]hortness of breath or tightness in your throat; [c]hills; [h]ot flashes; [n]ausea; [a]bdominal cramping; [c]hest pain; [h]eadache; [d]izziness, lightheadedness or faintness; [n]umbness or tingling sensation; [f]eeling of unreality or detachment. One of the worst things about panic attacks is the intense fear that you’ll have another one. You may fear having panic attacks so much that you avoid certain situations where they may occur” (thank you Mayoclinic.org).

Recently, a very horrible something was perpetrated against me. Within a few days of the horrible something I started suffering from some of the above mentioned symptoms. I have had panic attacks in the past. And in the past I chose to be stoic and “man” through it only to find that my life was eroding away because of my suffering. This time around I was brave enough early enough in my suffering to reach out for help. I went to my MD who immediately started me on some medication.

Am I feeling better? Yes. Or at least the medication is helping me to function. How so? Well, rather than wanting to throw up and cry and then stay home for the day I still want to throw up and cry but am able to work and exercise and do normal life things that, given time, will help get me closer and closer to feeling like me. I may still need to seek some cognitive therapy. But at the very least I am not a crying heap laying on the floor of my bedroom.

So why am I talking about all this and not just keeping it hush hush? Mental illness is an illness like any other illness that knocks us away from living life to its fullest. I go to my MD to get my asthma treated when it knocks me on my ass. And now I can say that I have the strength to go to my MD to have my panic attacks treated when they knock me on my ass. I should not be and I am not afraid/embarrassed to admit that I am suffering from a mental illness. And I wish that folks would not feel stigmatized by our society’s horrible views regarding mental health. I am Danish and Denmark is empirically the happiest country on the planet. Denmark’s happiness comes from many different sources but Denmark doesn’t stigmatize mental illness: Denmark embraces mental illness and treats it effectively and its people are empowered to live wonderful stigma free lives. We Danish Americans are arguably one of the smallest minorities in the USA because ya gotta be nutz to leave Denmark.

I wish to talk more about mental health another day. To wrap this up I encourage anyone who’s suffering from mental illness to seek help. I know how stressful dental school is. Practicing dentistry is also very stressful. And I have had to live through losing student dentists and colleagues to suicide. There’s a lot of life worth living. And it’s good and right to seek help and live to see beautiful todays and tomorrows.

SNAP. Ya know, that wacky crappy liquid shit we use to make temporary (provisional) crowns in dental school? Yeah, that crap. What can I say about SNAP? Umm…nothing good. Oh wait, it’s cheap (and you always get what you pay for!). SNAP, the horrible crap that’s a sadistic rite of passage for every student dentist past and present. SNAP, the stuff that shrinks before your very eyes. SNAP, the crap that develops open margins and interproximal contacts even though you never even touched said contacts and margins. SNAP, the stuff that gives me recurring nightmares and PTSD symptoms. And guess what? I get to teach student dentists how to use the crap (ARGHHH)! Why? Cuz it ain’t goin’ away any time soon (damn)! Students (and faculty) STILL need to suffer through the crap. Worse, students need to be COMPETENT in its use in order to graduate! Oh the fantastic temporary crown materials that await students after dental school: Integrity; ProTemp; CoolTemp; VersaTemp; LuxaTemp; etc.

So at least for now it’s here to stay. And I have experimented heavily with ways to make it work in MY hands. Perhaps a few of my techniques may be of some use to someone out there (I make no guarantees).

1. Thermoplastic matrix…We have to make working with SNAP extra hard so we always use those damn thermoplastic suck down matrices that really suck (but they’re really cheap). And then people cut corners in their constructing said matrices thinking that it will save time. WRONG!!! Thermoplastic matrices are single use pieces of junk. In other words, constructing several matching practice temporary crowns on the same crown prep requires SEVERAL thermoplastic matrices. And those matrices need to be made on a stone model made from an impression (or duplicated stone model) of the exact same tooth/typodont/mouth that you’re prepping. The stone model should be no more than 10-15mm tall from the base of the model to the free gingival margin and the tongue/palate need to be cut out of the model so that the vacuum forming machine can have a chance to make a somewhat adequately adapted matrix. Trying to use a big thick typodont, especially the wrong typodont (fixed vs. operative) will only result in an ill fitting thermoplastic matrix that will be HARDER to work with. Cut your matrix in such a way: that there are two teeth on either side of the tooth you’re prepping; that there’s matrix covering 2-3mm of gingiva.

2. Mixing SNAP…I keep adding more and more powder to the liquid with constant stirring so that I can get to a honey consistency as quick as possible. Adding too little powder will result in extra shrinkage. So, adding adding adding powder with stirring stirring stirring and quickly arriving at HONEY will help prevent some shrinkage.

3. Loading SNAP into the thermoplastic matrix…Just like using a swizzle stick to add honey to tea I will pick up honey consistency SNAP on the back end of a bend-a-brush (or something similar) and swizzle/drip a string of SNAP snot into the proper tooth slot within the thermoplastic matrix.

4. Smoosh the thermoplastic matrix/SNAP combo into place over the right teeth in the mouth…We have to start to work fast and smart. The SNAP will be starting to set up fairly quickly at this point. Keep in mind that SNAP goes from liquid shit to kind of gooey shit to honey shit to doughy shit to rubbery shit to set shit, in that order, fairly quickly if we mix the right amount of powder shit into the plain clear liquid shit. We want the thermoplastic matrix/SNAP combo going into the mouth and onto the teeth right in between the honey shit consistency and the doughy shit consistency so that the SNAP doesn’t flow everywhere.

5. Make a test piece of SNAP…Take all the extra SNAP that didn’t go into the thermoplastic matrix and roll it into a ball. As it turns into a doughier consistency roll it into a hot dog shape (cylinder). The SNAP will start to get rubbery. We want to remove the SNAP from the mouth when rubbery. How do we know when it’s rubbery enough? When we bend an end of the hot dog and it “snaps” back into the same hot dog shape. If we bend the hot dog and it doesn’t snap back then it’s still too doughy.

6. Take the thermoplastic matrix/SNAP combo out of the mouth…Take the matrix with adequately rubbery SNAP and give it just a little 0.5mm to 1.0mm push up (burp it) and then push it back down into place. That little burp will break any kind of seal that may have formed. Further, we don’t want to burp more than 0.5-1.0mm because any further lifting (and/or multiple lifts) could wreck the temporary crown’s margin. After we’ve reseated the matrix/crown we then lift the entire matrix/crown out of the mouth and place the matrix/crown in hot water (this will speed the final setting and help prevent more shrinkage).

7. Remove the fully set crown from the matrix and separate the crown from big pieces of flash/excess.

8. Remove big pieces of flash around the papillae/interproximal contact areas…We now try to remove big interproximal pieces of SNAP around the papillae and the interproximal contact areas (please don’t touch the actual interproximal contacts) that prevent seating of the crown. We won’t do much margin refinement yet and, once again, don’t touch the interproximal contacts. We just want to remove enough stuff to get the crown to seat.

9. Reline the provisional crown…We now remove a little bit of material (0.1-0.2mm) from the intaglio/inside of the crown with a small bur in a slow or high speed handpiece (try to limit the removal of material from the intaglio side of the incisal/occlusal as this area will eventually serve as a stop). Make sure that the crown fits back onto the tooth easily after reaming out the intaglio. Now, mix up some more honey consistency SNAP, swizzle the SNAP into the inside of the crown and smoosh it back onto the tooth (now is when that untouched intaglio side of the incisal/occlusal will give you that good firm stopping point). Take any excess SNAP that oozed out beyond the crown margin and pack it/shape it snug around the crown margin/finish line of the tooth with a cord packer/composite instrument. Remove the crown from the tooth when the SNAP becomes rubbery. Put the crown back in hot water to fully set.

10. Trim the crown…Mark the interproximal contacts with a sharpie and remember that those are “no fly zones”. Trim the margins in a vertical orientation parallel to the long axis of the tooth. We thin the margin areas in this orientation from the outside of the crown moving closer and closer to the actual margin until the flash surrounding the margin becomes paper thin and flakes off with a fingernail (this means that the bur or disk never actually makes any kind of contact with the margin). Then we can go around the remainder of the crown removing any remaining flash and shaping the interproximal areas with no touching/losing the contacts (“no fly zone”).

11. Polish with composite finishers/polishers (red and yellow stripe finishing carbides if needed, green sandpaper disks, pink sandpaper disks, pink rubber points, blue rubber points).

So what am I accomplishing? With the thermoplastic matrix I make a custom provisional crown and then I use the reamed out crown and reline to further customize my custom provisional. As SNAP shrinks SOOOOOO much I defeat that shrinkage with the reline. And that reline usually helps to cut down on open and/or short margins that require “salting and peppering”. Also, if I lose a proximal contact I can cut a hole through the crown at the contact area and use a reline to smoosh SNAP out that hole establishing a new proximal contact.

Hope this helps a little. I can’t make SNAP go away but I sure hope there’s a pearl somewhere in my writing. And hey, if one can master SNAP then making temporary crowns with the good stuff (expensive stuff) will be EASY!

This is so hard for me to write about as it conjures up such deep feelings of darkness and despair. I can only write so much about this at one time so I’m going to have to break this into parts and write about it only as I am able.

I believe it’s a well known fact that I hated dental school. I hated dental school with passion. Yes, when I was a damn, dirty, diseased University of Minnesota dental student I was admittedly a miserable person. It’s complex as to how I arrived at misery but misery was my constant companion. And misery can be so hard to overcome especially when everyone around you is miserable and for the same reasons.

Part of the problem was that I sold my soul to dental school. Perhaps I didn’t have a choice at the time but age and wisdom (which I likely lacked in dental school) tell me that we always have a choice. Needless to say, I lost all that made me who I was. And the misery feedback loop kept me blinded to all the things that made me, well, “me”. There was so much “me” that got me to dental school. What happened to “me”? I don’t know and I’m carefully/gently trying to figure that out. Stay tuned.

So, learning from my soul mistakes in dental school, what is an emergency thing that you can do NOW to give your soul a little break? I suggest that you try to remember one to three things that make your soul sing. And for anyone reading this post who is currently a student dentist PLEASE try not to say that being a dentist makes your soul sing as you’re not quite a dentist yet and I suggest that saying something like that is more like setting a goal. Goals help blaze a path. But what will nourish you on your path to a goal? The soul needs nourishment and attention. So, perhaps think back to being a child. Did you like to paint? Did you like to run around the backyard blowing bubbles? Did you like flying kites? Perhaps you liked to knit? Did you like sitting and watching the sun go down? Or, right now are you a pet parent and can’t wait to see your pet baby every day? It doesn’t matter what it is that makes your soul sing. And don’t try to say “ach, that was just a stupid little kid thing that’s just a waste of time”. The little kid thing gnawing at you is likely your soul screaming for help.

Once you relocate one to three very precious things that make your soul sing try to set aside some sacred time/space to do or focus on your precious thing(s). Set a goal that I WILL NOT LET ANYTHING invade my sacred time/space and I WILL lose myself in my precious thing(s) that makes my soul sing. If needed, set an alarm and let that alarm serve as a wall separating your precious sacred time/space from the rest of the world. I KNOW this takes great effort but I KNOW it may pay great dividends. Take it from a guy who forked up four years of his soul life and can never get those years back.

I have a feeling that most people don’t realize how much I love trains and model railroading. It all started when I was a very little boy. I don’t know if it was a Christmas or Birthday gift but my Mom and Dad got me my very first train set: Lionel O scale (O scale is pretty big in size and the locomotives can exceed a foot in length). It was big and it was beautiful. It had a classic Santa Fe locomotive (with that distinctive red war bonnet nose) and several different types of cars including a red caboose. I would sit on the floor for hours watching my train go by. The sound and that little whiff of ozone were pure kid heaven. And Dad and I always mused about how we’d make a train layout together (a layout is when you affix the tracks to a board and build scenery).

Well, O scale trains are really big and also really expensive. And as a kid I didn’t have much money and much space for my beautiful O scale Lionel train. I needed to think smaller. So early in high school I took all my bonus money from selling Boy Scout Christmas wreaths and started buying HO scale trains (which are smaller and less expensive than O scale trains). And now my Dad and I started to get really serious about a train layout because we could do a lot more for less money and in a smaller space. In fact, we’d go to all kinds of model train shows together and dream of the cool scenery we’d make. And in the interim I set up my HO scale trains on the floor in the upstairs of my Grandma and Grandpa’s house. That was my zone. I built little structures, I added more and more track, and, no matter what, if I was having a bad day I could always hang out with Grandma and Grandpa and run my train and dream that I was on that train going to new and beautiful places.

Time passes and life changes. Off to college. Grandma and Grandpa pass away. Mom and Dad move. And my trains and train dreams get packed away. And life continues to change. Go to dental school. Get married. Move around the country. Practice dentistry. Become a dental professor. And then something happens. Life events sometimes remind you of where you once were and what your most special dreams used to be.

Five years ago I had a life changing event. During that time I rediscovered model trains and immediately felt like I arrived back at a happy place. And unlike the past I’m not putting my trains and train dreams back in a box. Plus, I have a little more money and space than I did back in high school. So I have been collecting model trains like a mad man (I have such a patient and supportive wife). I started out by collecting N scale trains which are smaller than HO scale trains (N scale locomotives are 4 to 5 inches long). And this past spring (2019) I bought my first Z scale train which is the smallest scale of them all (locomotives are 3 inches long) but we don’t refer to them as cute!

So there you have it. I love trains (model and otherwise). I don’t have that layout yet but it’s in the works. Stay tuned. Oh, almost forgot: someday I’d love to take Amtrak’s Southwest Chief from Chicago to California and then take the California Zephyr back spending time seeing America the old fashioned way and taking pictures and writing music.

What does it mean to be a D2 (second year) dental student? Learning dentistry, right? Wrong! Well, somewhat wrong. But we need to step back and look at this from a different perspective (as we say in dispute resolution, get a 30,000 foot view). In other words, if we live with the belief that D2 year is just about individual dental skills, like an extension of D1 year, then we’ll sorely miss the point. And it’s been my experience that when we miss the point of it all then we become frustrated, lose hope, lose motivation, want to quit, want to beat on faculty, turn into zombies, need trips to Colorado every other weekend (soon it will be Illinois and Michigan), etc. D2 year is the same shit different year and everyone feels the same way about their D2 experiences.

So what exactly are you trying to say Doc? In D2 year we are pushing you in ways that undergrad never did or even could. In D2 year we are giving you a taste of stress and pressure, mixed in with some difficult dental skills, like you’ve never seen before and can, if allowed, melt you into a ball of goo OR EMPOWER YOU. BTW, having a successful dental career means overcoming a SHIT LOAD of stress and pressure DAILY and doing so PROFESSIONALLY without melting into a ball of goo. Who ever got that in undergrad?

So ya did good in undergrad. Yay (pat on the back)! That don’t mean jack for how good a dentist ya gonna be. Huh?! Ok, so ya took some tests, wrote some papers, and mixed some chemicals together without blowing your face off. What part of that has anything to do with dentistry? Not much! Say what?! Dentistry is about hand skills, interpersonal communication/relationships, and managing stressful situations. Who of us in undergrad had any time to: take a painting class; take a sculpting class; take a class on management; take a communication class focusing on interpersonal communication? Undergrad is usually about checking off just the right boxes and getting good grades and doing so in order to get the reward at the end. So what does solid undergraduate work mean to me? Perseverance! Being able to overcome challenges without melting into a ball of goo! Ya gonna need that shit to survive in dental school and thrive in a dental career!

D1 year is about working within the lines: take some gooey shit and put it in between the margins (lines) and then use the existing shape of the tooth to form the gooey shit you just placed. Seems hard at the time but it’s a relatively easy thing to do (given enough time and practice). In D2 year we’re forcing you to use your mind and vision and hands to mold and sculpt big difficult somethings from nothing using only wacky liquid and/or waxy shit. Then we throw in twenty different distractions and only give you enough time to do things once so it had better be done right on the first try.

Guess what? Welcome to a day of dentistry: stressful procedures on stressed out conscious patients all while managing a dental practice. In our practices we juggle ten to twenty things at any moment of any given day and they all have to get done and they have to get done well on the first try (SO OFTEN in dentistry there are NO SECOND CHANCES so we have to get it right…any questions?). For instance, you just get a purchase (grip) on a busted root tip and someone from your office (sometimes with attitude) barges into your op and is like: “Doc, I have been waiting ten minutes for you to (fill in the blank)!”. Immediate reaction internally is: “What the fork! Who the fork are you to talk to me like that?! Are you out of your forking mind?! Can’t you see I’m forking busy?! Who the fork pays your forking salary?! Get the fork out of my face you forking tarantula from Hell!”. And then our training immediately kicks in and we smile and say: “How about if we take just a little break. I’ll be right back. Is there anything we can do to help you feel more comfortable while I’m away for a few minutes?”. Want a stressful job in an incredibly calm environment (and make more money)? Be a heart surgeon (“whatever you do do not make any noise, move around, sneeze, cough, fart, belch, barf, interrupt and in any way shape or form bother the surgeon for the next five hours”).

So try to relax, enjoy the ride, learn all you can, get a few C grades, MAKE MISTAKES (it’s OK, they make you a better dentist), let your faculty help you learn from mistakes, pass your tests, let the learning and training take precedence over the grades, and please forget about the senseless quest for a grade. Patients want and deserve the best we can give them. And I have NEVER had a patient ask me about my grades. Topped ranked and lowest ranked people in each graduating class receive the same honor: DOCTOR!

So I am a patient based skills examiner on the clinic floor at Marquette. And what is a patient based skills exam? Only one of the most important things burgeoning pre-doctoral student dentists will ever do to prove themselves competent to operate independently on patients (that’s also known as…being a doctor!). In other words, a student must perform several procedures from start to finish on a patient under my supervision with NO help from me and with me GRADING each step of the procedure. And NO ONE can graduate without passing ALL of their patient based skills exams. Just a little bit of pressure on students. But it’s also a CRAP load of responsibility and pressure on ME! I must always remind myself of the procedure, each step of the procedure, each grading criteria for each step of the procedure, the rules for the testing of that procedure, etc. Do I study the rules and criteria for each exam I administer? You bet I do. Do I refer back to the rules and criteria for the procedure during the examination? Also, you bet I do! As an analogy, a pilot who has flown an airplane hundreds of times will ALWAYS go through the written start up and take off procedure on EVERY flight just so NOTHING is missed. That’s how seriously I take these exams. Why? These aren’t blind examinations. I know each and every student that I test. These are students that I have helped nurture from DAY ONE of dental school. I deeply want to see each and every student succeed and I care deeply for each student. But I also have a responsibility to objectively administer the exam, protect the patient, protect the public and future patients, protect the profession, protect the interests of the State Dental Examining Board, protect the University, etc. I need to give my students praise only as I am allowed during the exam and I am also obligated to give students bad news should the need arise. Giving bad news is HARD and SUCKS but I HAVE to do so when needed and I try my very best to do so in as caring a way as possible (I hope it comes across that way). And a great amount of teaching can arise from things that don’t go as planned.

So, when students are taking a patient based skills exam and are completely stressed out just know that I AM TOO!!!😱

Disney World has this new people mover transportation thing that’s like big ski lift gondolas (like at Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, Canada) to move people between EPCOT and Hollywood Studios and a couple of resort hotels. It’s officially called the Skyliner but I call it the sky bucket (can’t take credit for that) cuz it looks like buckets hanging from a wire.

So I pretty much love all things Disney (and have spent WAY too much money at Disney World to prove it) but these sky bucket things? Not my thing! First, Disney built a sky bucket station at my quiet, hidden, unknown, back entrance to EPCOT so that’s a bummer for me now with extra pagan hordes of people at my favorite entrance (not to mention the ugly buckets coming and going from the new (and big) station). Second, the sky buckets don’t go anywhere I need to and/or want to go from EPCOT (it’s like taxation without representation???). Third, the sky buckets will not operate when lightning is in the vicinity. Isn’t Orlando the lightning capital of Florida? Fourth, the sky buckets have NO air conditioning. Whoa!!! Are you kidding me? Sometimes it’s so hot at Disney World you can’t even stand outside in the shade. Shove ten sweaty stinky Disney crazed people into a glass and metal enclosure in the hot Florida sunshine? Do you think that will feel good for twenty minutes? Do you think that will smell good for twenty minutes? Do you think those buckets will ever smell good after twelve hours of that every day (I picture a sumo wrestling gym’s locker room)? BARF!

Probably shouldn’t judge it until I’ve actually seen it but I guess one could say I have developed a significant bias. We’ll see. Skyliner (I mean sky bucket) officially opens in a few days and I will get to see it for myself in December.

Well, not today, but I certainly have gotten wax on my clothes. I hate messing up my clothes with wax and it always seems to happen on days when I’m wearing something OTHER than scrubs (which usually means EXPENSIVE).

Dental student=waxing a whole lot of something all the time and it will probably never change (yeah I had to do a load of waxing as a dental student…same shit different year). And guess what? I’m waxing a whole lot as faculty (that will probably deter a whole lot of people from becoming faculty).

So when it happens (wax on your clothes), and it will happen, here’s what I’ve done:

-On an ironing board put a towel or washcloth UNDER the waxed area of clothing (for pants put the towel/washcloth inside the pant leg directly under the wax).

-Put several layers of paper towels OVER the waxed area of clothing.

-With an iron set on low to no- more-than medium run the iron over the paper towels that are directly over the wax (the wax will melt into the paper towels).

-Repeat until the wax has been absorbed into the paper towels (be sure to put new pieces of paper towels over the waxed area often so that wax DOESN’T go back into your clothing).

-Any oily and/or colored residue can be removed with a simple degreaser (I use plain old Dawn dish detergent).

Hope that helps. Maybe someday waxing will go away forever (yay, there goes some of my dental school PTSD!). But for now waxing is here to stay and hopefully we can remove those ugly waxing memories from our clothes.

Interproximals STRESS ME OUT when I’m prepping teeth for crowns. There’s way too much crap to worry about such as: I can’t hit the tooth next door; I can’t over reduce the mesial and distal axial walls; I can’t over taper the mesial and distal axial walls; I can’t wreck my margin/chamfer; I can’t hurt the patient; I can’t I can’t I can’t (it’s no wonder some of we dentists go nuts and have to spend extraordinary amounts of money at Disney World!).

And back when I was a damn, dirty, diseased University of Minnesota preclinical dental student who would never amount to anything (jury is still out on that one) I was taught to take my big ass diamond crown prep bur and cut each interproximal a little at a time from the buccal, then the lingual, then the buccal again, then the lingual again, etc., and all the while: I can’t hit the tooth next door; I can’t over reduce the mesial and distal axial walls; I can’t over taper the mesial and distal axial walls; I can’t wreck my margin/chamfer; I can’t hurt the patient; I can’t I can’t I can’t. ENOUGH ALREADY!!! So, find a lazy ass way to do it (well, it’s more like find a comfortable and efficient way to get the job done WELL and RIGHT but it’s always more fun/rebellious to think I find lazy ass ways to get things done).

With a 245 carbide bur I know I can drop a perfect mesial and distal box (Class II preps) in my sleep AND I can do it without: hitting the tooth next door; over reducing the mesial and distal axial walls; over tapering the mesial and distal axial walls; making a horrible gingival seat; hurting the patient. So now when I do a crown prep I START my prep with a 245 carbide bur and prep perfect mesial and distal Class II boxes that have a perfect mesial/distal width of 1mm from cavosurface margin to axial wall and have a perfect gingival contact opening of at least 0.5mm. I will push my buccal and lingual proximal walls a bit further to the buccal and lingual (think inlay/onlay prep) because those walls have to go away anyway for a proper crown prep. Further, I will add a little tiny bit of taper to my mesial and distal axial walls (once again think inlay/onlay prep with a path of draw/insertion). Next I will get my big ass diamond crown prep bur and prep the occlusal and buccal/lingual axial walls. And finally I will use my big ass diamond crown prep bur to gently incorporate my already prepped interproximals into the crown prep (I turn those gingival seats into beautiful chamfers and finalize the entire path of draw/insertion). This all saves me a whole lot of extra stress because: I don’t hit the tooth next door; I don’t over reduce the mesial and distal axial walls; I don’t over taper the mesial and distal axial walls; I don’t make horrible interproximal margins/chamfers; and I don’t hurt the patient. OK, that’s a whole lot of DON’T but those are good DON’Ts that I can live with (we dentists are such curious folks…or at least I am).