kanye west now

so, we know i'm sort of obsessed with lil wayne's grill..

 and now kanye west has joined the club.  evidently, he had some extensive dental work done after an accident in 2002 that broke his jaw and required him to be wired together.   somehow, someone got hold of his panoramic xray, taken while he was wired together:

 now, what i see is that kanye had ortho at some point, probably in his childhood (they extracted 4 permanent premolars....a favorite treatment by some orthodontists that drives me crazy b/c it usually leaves patients w/ a flat mid-facial profile, but i digress, as usual).  it looks like he may have had some trauma to the lowers and he had to wear a lower splint:

 see?  even kanye got a little flat-faced from those premolar extractions..makes the mouth turn down.  sigh.

unfortunately, the photos of his new grill are all fuzzy.  it looks like they did work on the lower six anterior teeth, but i can't tell exactly what was done, but it looks like they're all splinted together like lil wayne's

here's the video of him discussing it on ellen:  they really do sparkle!



and i STILL haven't found anyone to let me do a simple diamond implant in a canine. i must be seeing the wrong patients....

kickboxing

as i've mentioned before, i started working out w/ raymond 'desade' desmarais several months ago to help the chronic back pain  from which i'd suffered--upper back from 15 years of doing dentistry, lower back from 3 yrs of picking up kids.  well, he knocked the pain out in a few weeks like he was swatting a fly, then he got serious about kicking my butt.  we started w/ weight lifting.  then he brought some pads in and let me kick him a few times at the end of a workout.  then he got me some gloves so i could hit him a little.  then he put it together and let me kick AND hit him.....and it's AMAZING. 

i had luc come yesterday to videotape some.  these are just some practice workouts.  the really fun ones are 2-3 minute timed rounds.

it's interesting for me to see the workout from this perspective.  i always thought i hit like rocky, but instead, i hit more like bullwinkle....if bullwinkle were a girl.  and maybe really, really tired.  in my defense, this was after a 45 minute workout.  and i'd worked all day.  and i'm pretty sure i had a papercut.  sigh.  i gotta work on my form.

daniel schorr died today and symmetry

i've always had a special place in my heart for daniel schorr b/c of the obvious similarities in our names...and the fact that we both have had to go through life correcting people who try to spell it intuitively.  him, shore, me schmoor.

i knew daniel schorr as a commentator for npr, not knowing that he was already in his 70's when first heard him on public radio in the 80's.  he was 93 when he died today, his advanced age never evident in his voice.  i had no clue he was that old and assumed he'd be around as long as me.  didn't i just hear him on npr this week?

what i've learned about him today:  he's been a journalist and correspondent for almost 65 years now.  he conducted the first ever tv interview with nikita khruschev in 1957.  he was number 17 of 20 on richard nixon's "enemies list"; a fact he discovered while reading the list live on-air.   in 1976, he made public a suppressed report on illegal cia and fbi 'findings' and to this day, he has not revealed his source.  he's been a staunch advocate for first amendment rights his whole career.

less auspiciously, he was born august 31, 1916, so he and i not only share similar names, we share our birthday (i'm aug 31, 1964.  if you have any interest in chinese astrology, you'd know that we were both born in 'dragon' years.  i think all this means that we both have a knack for occasionally pissing off the wrong people b/c of our beliefs and/or behavior).  the schorr's are ukranian-jew, he was born in the bronx.  the schmorr's are prussian-jew, my dad born in the bronx.

sigh.  i'm just really going to miss his voice.

my laser rocks

this is really only going to be interesting to people either in the dental field.  not for the faint of heart, but it's so cool!

this lady came in with a traumatic cyst the size of a marble!!  i've never seen one even half this size before!  she bit her lip, it swelled, causing her to accidentally bite it more, causing more swelling, etc etc.  you see these pretty often, same location, but they're usually the size of a bb.

 so i got her numb and lasered it.  it was sort of a surprise assault, but she did great!  here's immediately after--it's amazing!

here's one day later.  she has a little residual swelling, but the tissue looks great.  it's hard to believe i took a marble out of her lip yesterday.  AND it doesn't hurt.  little to no post-op pain.  lasers are crazy magic.

a new diagnosis: SUIT

this was forwarded to me by a friend several months ago and is one of the funniest things on the internet. jolene roxbury is a southern comedienne who does characters based on her bayou relatives.

fwiw, this is probably more of a chick thing than a guy thing, but i think it's relevant for this blog since SUIT (somthin' up in there) is now a commonly used diagnostic term in our office.

it's all audio...no video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-XhuFSQFs

total dorks

a conversation we had in the office yesterday:

kassie's got a patient in the chair whose wife is a toxicologist.  he asks about a stuffed creature she keeps on a shelf (it's supposed to be a 'halitosis bug') and mentions that he got one for his wife once; it's a bacterium or a spore or something.

i say:  'spores are amazing things.  they're going to take over the world someday b/c they're so hard to kill.'
kassie, unconvinced, says:  'well, maybe, but i'm not going to hold my breath'
i say:  'you'd better if there's a spore around'.

yukyukyuk.  we just can't help ourselves.


another conversation....'rent a liberal':

last week, we have a patient, also in kassie's room.  she's a teacher at a local minority college; very cool, very hip, looooong dreadlocks, flowing shirts and skirts.  we were discussing our mutual love for indian food.  she said she'd like to go to india and be a serial wedding crasher just to try out all the buffets, which i thought was a GREAT idea.  then we figured a way to do it for profit.  if an indian couple wanted to diversify their guest list and show how progressive they are, they could hire us as a biracial, middle-aged, lesbian couple, thus covering a lot of bases in a relatively small, discounted package.  we'd call our business 'rent-a-liberal'. 

i love our patients....

personal training

i've been in pretty good shape most of my life; exercise has ALWAYS been a part of my regular routine.  then at 42, i got pregnant....with a litter of two.

but, ohhhh, i was going to be one of those women who exercised right up until the day they give birth.  you know the ones i'm talking about of course.  but then, at around say, 4 or 5 months into it, i was taking a ballet class (with righteous optimism, i'd bought a pre-paid card of 20 classes), and had already accepted that jumps weren't going to happen anymore, was at the barre, doing a port de bras (french for 'leaning backwards w/ your arm in the air') and realized i was stopped, by my belly, from going back more than 5 degrees from vertical.  yeesh.  fine.  FINE.   so there are other exercises.  i can always walk.

but no one told me about the hip issue.  45 extra pounds sitting on top of 42 yr old hips doesn't make for a walk in the park.  or up the hill.  my office is one block from armadillo grill, a regular on our lunch circuit.  at about 7 months into the pregnancy, i realized i couldn't walk the 300 ft, even with nachos as an incentive, so while my staff all strolled down the street, i drove my, sigh, minivan the block down to the restaurant and back.

by month 8, it was starting to look they would have to wheel me from room to room to see patients.  fortunately, i went into labor before it got that bad.

ok, so my plan was start exercising as soon as the babies were born, right?  yeah, right.  i always scoffed at those stay at home moms who complained that they didn't get dressed until four in the afternoon b/c they were so busy, then i discovered that dressing by four was a day of over-achievement.

three-plus years of over-using a couple of weird muscles to do dentistry and pick up kids and not exercising the other 98% of them has led to chronic pain and muscle spasms.  now that the boys are somewhat self-entertaining, i've been able to commit to a little gym time.  one of my patients, it turns out, is a personal trainer who works out of a gym a few blocks from the office.  his name is raymond desmarais aka the marquis de sade (french for 'you want me to lift what?!?  how many times?!?).  however, for all my whining, the improvement is amazing.  it was about 2 weeks into it that i realized i wasn't in pain anymore.  not just not sore from the workouts, but no neck/back/shoulder pain. yippeee!

raymond's still the devil though.

the circus and lil wayne

we went to the circus this weekend.   the ringmaster had crazy good teeth.   we were sitting near the front row, but wayyyy on the side.  fortunately it was the side that the animals and acrobats came in.  we had an excellent view of the cleanup of elephant poop.

anyhow, the ringmaster:  i googled him b/c i wondered what his real purpose was besides to look pretty.  he's one of the youngest ringmasters ever hired by barnum and bailey, at 23 and is a highly respected magician in his field.  go figure.  he says that in every show, he runs aprox 2 miles (one end of the ring to another, over and over) and drinks 2 liters of water.  i had wondered why he looked more athletic than the acrobats.

speaking of great teeth:  i have a somewhat morbid fascination w/ lil wayne.  i've been watching the $150k train wreck of  a grill in his mouth for several years now, enlarging images whenever i see a pic of him grinning like a cheshire cat.  now, as an artist, i think the guy's got real genius.  but holy cow!  that mouth!  all i can think of when i see him is the active gum disease, pus and inflammation he's harboring under all that bling.  and let's face it...he gets plenty of action but who, really, is going to kiss that twice?  i think i just threw up in my mouth.

so, his recent sentencing was postponed b/c of dental surgery, and of course i've been tracking it.  he had to have 8 (EIGHT!!)  root canals...and then something about implants....being redone?  new ones being placed?  oh, and they had to revamp the diamond and platinum hardware.  i can only hope that a hygienist smacked him around and gave him several thousand yards of floss with stern instructions.  if kassie had hold of him, he'd be begging her forgiveness w/ promises of reform within minutes (more than his judge got, i'm sure).

meanwhile, i'm still trying to convince someone to let me put a diamond inlay on their upper canine tooth.  so far, no takers, but hope springs eternal.

florida

i went to florida last week/weekend for a seminar in clearwater.  it was given by a dentist named bill strupp.  i'd taken the same course about 10 years ago but i thought maybe it would be a good time for a refresher.  unfortunately, his material was exactly the same as 10 years before.  at least it was good to get away.  he does these full-mouth porcelain reconstructions after a specific type of periodontal surgery involving root-reshaping (which is being taught in may and THAT one looks interesting) to bring the margins of the old crowns and fillings above the gumline to reverse and prevent periodontal disease.

ok, not thrilling to anyone that's not a dentist.  but since they've proven such a strong correlation between periodontal disease and other systemic diseases, it's definitely worth knowing how to do.  i see a LOT of inflammation around old fillings and crowns.  frequently, it's not anyone's fault--it's just that the decay went so far down on the tooth that the dentist who did them had no choice but to bury the margins below the gum level.

we came home to 6 inches of snow sunday.  blech.  meanwhile the boys were scheduled for tubes the next morning at, get this, 5:15 am.  those poor kids have had non-stop ear infections for the past 2 winters.  they've been on antibiotics this year, i swear, since october.  i would have walked to the hospital to make sure they got there.  dr. doug holmes did the surgery--he also did my sinus surgery last year.  i LOVE that man.  he doesn't pussy-foot around a diagnosis or treatment option.  and he's a terrific surgeon....the boys had their surgery, came home to sleep off the anesthesia, woke up, ate half the refrigerator and went outside to throw snowballs all afternoon.

soooo many no-shows in hygiene this week.  snow is the ultimate excuse to get out of a dental appointment (especially for a cleaning).  poor kassie's been on the phone trying to get people in to get their teeth cleaned and alleviate her boredom.  i'm surprised she hasn't pulled people in from the hallways.  as she just told me, she hates sitting still.

me...i LOVE sitting still.  i just don't remember how to do it.

mondays

monday is my 'day off'.  iow, that's the day i'm home, alone, with the boys.  i try to get a little work done....marketing stuff, checking search engine placement, replying to emails, etc but little actual work gets done b/c most of the day is spent looking for enzo's blue ball or matisse's bunny fuzzy.  or dealing with some fashion drama.   or wiping a snotty nose.  or wondering why it's so quiet and discovering the boys taking turns sucking all the toothpaste out of the tube and wondering how much flouride they can consume before they get truly poisoned (you'd think i'd know).

then every half hour or so, luc calls to 'check in' and make sure all is well.  like he's helping out in some way.  he always manages to call when i'm pulling a kid out of the oven or something.

the boys are finally getting tubes in their ears a week from today.  i had to plunk down $1000 to hold the appointment.  i hear hair salons are taking credit cards numbers to make appointments too.  we get a fair number of no-shows and last-minute cancellations, despite reminder calls and cards.  my obgyn doesn't even call to remind me about a pap smear appt i made a year ago and yet people manage to forget appointments made a week prior, even after getting a call the day before.  we go back and forth about whether to get a 'deposit' to make an appointment and never manage to bring ourselves to do it.

sigh.  certainly i'd rather get my haircut than have dental work done.  but come on!  a cleaning is not nearly as humbling as an ob check.  well--as long as you've been flossing.

my first blog post

i've only done one blog before, and that was to describe a surgery i had; before-photos, after-photos, post op stuff, etc. hopefully this one won't have bruising as a topic.

so, where to start? i'm 45, a dentist in downtown raleigh, have identical twin boys (matisse and enzo) turning three soon and brother/sister rescue dogs. my kids' dad (luciano) is italian--off the boat from sardinia about 15 yrs ago--we eat a lot of really good food at our house. i graduated from indiana university school of dentistry, also 15 years ago.

moving on.

i got a wii for my birthday a year and a half ago. i was able to get on it again this past weekend for the first time in 413 days (the wii fit tells you how long it's been since you've exercised. it doesn't sneer or anything when it tells you it's been over a year, but you still feel guilty). how did i have time? long story involving our old tv dying, getting a new hi def plasma, and of course needing the particular blue ray dvd player that the local best buy didn't have in stock. luciano evidently couldn't wait for it to come in the mail so he drove, with the boys, to rocky mount. that meant that i had 2.5 hours to kill.

i was feeling pretty good about the 45 minutes of yoga and strength training i did, so i looked around for more fun stuff. there's a game where a virtual you 'heads' soccer balls being kicked at you by a team. if you get hit by a shoe, you lose 1 point; get hit by a panda head (don't ask me), you lose 3 points. the balls come at you faster and faster for a minute. it's scored so that anything under 100, your character falls down, pounding the grass in shame. after that is 'amateur' level, and i don't know what it takes to get past that level, but i know it's OVER 184.

when you're in your mid forties, you should NOT succumb to pride and try, for almost an hour, to get past amateur level. it was like having whiplash for 2 days. my hygienist, kassie, laughed non-stop and head-bobbed at me the whole week. thank god for aleve. i'm better now, so i think i'm ready to try again this weekend, if i can come up with another electronic component that we can't live without.